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Sunday, June 28, 2020

Sunday, June 28, 2020
Answer: when students of color get access to and are included in a university that has become inferior to that built for whites.

This can happen across universities, or across campuses in a university system, or across disciplines on a campus, or across time in one university.  Victories for access don't take care of the problem of unequal educational treatment.

This isn't to belittle this month's access victories.

First, the University of California Board of Regents voted to phase out the SAT in admissions.  This will push UC and others towards the holistic, qualitative assessment of candidates that they should have been practicing since the Bakke decision of 1978.  It's true that the Academic Senate's report suggests this isn't a magic bullet for increasing the presence of underrepresented minority (URM) students. It's also true that the decision was not good for faculty governance (see John Douglass's new paper on both points). All I'll note here is that the SAT is not just a test. It's an ideology, one that has consistently and wrongly claimed that racial inclusion lowers academic quality.  Politicians have used SAT scores to make whites think that widening access victimizes them.  It has been a technology of racial resentment that has helped unmake the public university. (See chapters 3-7 in my book of that name for an extended discussion of the structural racism of what I called rank meritocracy, featuring 1990s Gov. Pete Wilson's use of SAT scores to induce the UC Regents to ban affirmative action.)  The SAT's suspension is a real victory for cross-racial access.

The same can be said of the temporary reprieve for the DACA program won by a UC lawsuit.  UC president Janet Napolitano and Board of Regents chair John Pérez noted that UC would continue to fight for full access to UC and to financial aid, legal services, and other support systems for undocumented students brought to the US as children.  
Such actions “expressed the desire of those of us in California to make sure that we expanded opportunity and worked towards broad-based immigration reform as well,” Pérez said.  And so I think it would be no surprise to anybody that this university is going to continue to commit itself to representing the interest of all our students."
This is another access victory, which universities will need to work to sustain.

And yet access raises the question, access to what? What is the university that Napolitano and Pérez, as those most responsible for UC's finances, offer access to?

In brief, they offer today's students access to an underfunded UC.  Today's increased proportion of undocumented, first generation, low-income, immigrant, and URM students have fewer educational and related resources than did the cohorts that came before.

I documented this in a recent post.  Even after today's students pay a multiple of the tuition paid by students twenty years ago, their UC of 2020 has sixty percent of the net per-student funding compared to that earlier UC.  I noted that Pérez, as Assembly Speaker, was a leading enforcer of this austerity.

But is this negative funding pattern a racial pattern? We can check by comparing the share of white students at UC to the share of state income the government allocates to the university. 

The state's politicians have defunded UC in the exact proportion of its decline in white student share.

This is not a coordinated intention, but it has happened anyway. White enrollment and funding go down hand in hand--except when funding goes down faster during major economic downturns. Republican and Democratic leaders give diverse UC less money than they gave a comparatively white UC. This is what racist inclusion looks like.

Higher ed funding expresses systemic racism, even as most members of college communities oppose it.  We've seen the national pattern of "separate but unequal" in which most new white students go to selective colleges while most new students of color go to open access colleges--which have less money and lower graduation rates. We've seen the UC campuses with higher shares of students of color get less funding from UCOP. ("Rebenching" did not fully fix this).  In our UC system case, we see California state leaders--including leaders of racialized, educationally underserved communities--coming up with excuses, year after year, to fund UC in inverse proportion to its diversity. 

One can be consciously anti-racist while supporting systemic racism.  This is a pattern in U.S. political life. The pattern is top-down austerity management for institutions devoted to racial equality and related forms of social justice.  While politicians of both major parties have deregulated and de-taxed the private sector, they have applied austerity to public institutions, which offer reduced quality of service to populations that are often minority-majority.

The historian Elizabeth Hinton recently outlined the longer-term pattern:
President Lyndon B. Johnson recognized the role police brutality and socioeconomic inequality played in urban uprisings when he convened the Kerner Commission in 1967. Its report warned that if American political and economic institutions failed to commit resources “sufficient to make a dramatic, visible impact on life in the urban ghetto,” the nation would become increasingly divided along racial lines and plagued by inequality — a “spiral” of segregation, violence and police force.
Though the Kerner Commission and much subsequent research created "blueprints" for changing the “socioeconomic conditions that led to [George] Floyd’s premature death,” these research blueprints were never implemented.
The tragedy of the war on poverty is that the promise of grass-roots empowerment and representation was not sustained on a wider level, or for entire communities, but only for individuals. While remnants of critical reforms are still with us, like the Head Start program, on the whole policymakers at all levels believed “maximum feasible participation” worked against their self-interest. By 1965, as many promising grass-roots initiatives began to receive the initial [Office of Economic Opportunity] grants, they were required to design programs with public officials and municipal authorities in top-level positions. Soon after, policymakers defunded and dissolved anti-poverty programs.

UC isn't being dissolved.  But it is being steadily defunded.  Napolitano and her OP, Pérez and his regents, aren't openly opposing the most likely scenario for the state portion of UC's 2020-21 budget--a net 7 percent cut from 2019-20's level, or -$260.8 million. This cut to the permanent budget would happen in a year when Covid-19 health and safety could add at least $1 billion to the system's costs.

The long defunding has reduced the power and vitality of UC grassroots--for example, of the academic departments with a fraction of their former funding for speakers and internal research, which now depend on the accident of private donations. Similarly, UC's equivalent of anti-poverty programs--for students facing food insecurity, housing insecurity, and mental health issues--are also funded at a fraction of estimated need.

Replicating the other key post-Kerner retrenchment, UC governance is more top-down than ever. On the important matter of selecting the new president, the Board excluded the Academic Advisory Committee from basic participation in the search for the new president: even its Chair was not allowed to attend selection committee meetings. UCOP treated the UCSC wildcat COLA strike as a breach of contract discipline rather than as a desperate attempt to communicate basic needs. Participants still face disciplinary charges at Santa Cruz in spite of faculty objections. The Board of Regents remain literally inaccessible to faculty, who may not address the Board except through the president (Standing Order 105.2(e)).

Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom, Janet Napolitano, John Pérez, and their legislative comrades have replicated in higher ed the strategy that 1960s politicians applied  to cities after Black uprisings against police violence and racist underdevelopment.  They have expressed support for their developmentalist institutions while taking money and power out of them.  Of course the social damage done by underfunding public services for Black and other communities has been far greater than that wrought by underfunding of public universities.  But the practices are analogous.

The public university funding model is broken--and racist.  More inclusion as such won't fix that. Funding parity will fix it.  That means the 66 Dollar Fix or some similar Covid-era stimulus funding that gets per-student resources to the benchmark established for white UC.

Friday, June 12, 2020

Friday, June 12, 2020
A newly formed group, the DIVEST/ INVEST UCLA Faculty Collective, submitted a letter to the Chancellor of UCLA today demanding immediate divestment from all police and law enforcement agencies. This letter was signed by the 33 members of the collective and is co-signed by 214 other faculty.

The Divestment Now Demands letter urges Chancellor Gene Block to commit immediately to “end [UCLA’s] relationship with the Los Angeles Police Department and other county, state, and federal police departments and security agencies, including but not limited to the LA Sheriff’s Department, the California Highway Patrol, the Santa Monica Police Department, Department of Homeland Security, and ICE.”

It also demands that UCLA defund UCPD and “replace it with anti-carceral forms of accountability, including restorative and transformative justice and community-led public safety.”

This letter stands in support of demands for action put forward by Black students and Black faculty at UCLA. Professor Kelly Lytle Hernández, Director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA and a member of the DIVEST/ INVEST UCLA Faculty Collective stated: “The uprising for Black life is knocking on UCLA’s door and it has yet to answer.” She urged UCLA leadership to “meet the historic opportunity for systemic change by divesting from white supremacy and investing in Black life.”

The DIVEST/INVEST UCLA Faculty Collective is made up of faculty who played a key role in exposing LAPD’s recent use of UCLA’s Jackie Robinson Stadium as a field jail for detaining protesters and processing arrests. When faculty wrote to UCLA leadership in protest, UCLA leadership initially claimed to have had no knowledge of LAPD’s use of the stadium, only to acknowledge later that they did know that it was to be used as a “staging area,” though not as a field jail. In the Divestment Now Demands letter, UCLA faculty insist that UCLA take accountability for having aided the field jail and point out that “as long as UCLA collaborates with LAPD and other police forces, it is complicit in, and bears responsibility for, police brutality and racialized state violence.”

Joining a UC-wide and national movement, the UCLA faculty call for the university to step up to the moment and commit to abolition as part of its commitments as a public university. This includes reinvesting the university’s resources toward research and teaching, especially in the areas of racial justice, supporting Black students, faculty, staff, and workers at UCLA, as well as the Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities impacted by police violence.


MEDIA CONTACTS:
Sarah Haley, (203) 675-3653, sahaley@gmail.com
Ananya Roy, (510) 316-7731, ananyaucla@gmail.com

Photo Credit: Courthouse News

 

Thursday, June 4, 2020

Thursday, June 4, 2020

TO: Chancellor Gene D. Block, UCLA
 Executive Vice-Chancellor & Provost Emily Carter
Vice Chancellor Michael Beck
Vice Chancellor Jerry Kang

We write in response to your “Violation of Values” Bruinpost of June 3, 2020, regarding LAPD’s use of the Jackie Robinson Stadium as a field jail. We are glad to see that our efforts at shining a light on this incident have led UCLA leadership to reflect on the university’s active collaboration with LAPD including through the use of UCLA facilities by LAPD. We look forward to concrete next steps to ensure the “commitment to equity, diversity, respect and justice” that you foreground in your letter.

But as we noted in our letter of June 3, 2020, it is difficult for us to have confidence in these next steps without knowledge of the full truth. Last evening, the Los Angeles Times published the following: “The LAPD said in a statement late Wednesday that it created a command post in the stadium parking lot on Sunday in preparation for planned demonstration in Westwood the following day. It said the facility had been used ‘for previous city emergencies and was obtained with the approval of the staff’ of UCLA.” We immediately wrote to VC Beck expressing concern that this very disturbing fact had been omitted from his multiple communications with us, despite our request for a full and public accounting of the decisions, permissions, and agreements that enabled the use of the Jackie Robinson Stadium as a field jail.

We include VC Beck’s reply to Professor Roy in its entirety so as to not misrepresent it: “Thank you for sharing your increased frustration in this situation. As I indicated in my earlier email to you today, the letter to you and the other faculty members last night was intended to deal directly with the issue that you raised and social media was questioning with regard to the use of the stadium parking lot as a “field jail.” It was never my intend to mislead you or others by excluding the information with regard to the site being used for a staging area. We have a BruinPost that should be going out any minute, which clearly states that we were aware that the site was being used as a staging site for the LAPD command post as it has been used many times in the past. We acknowledge that such use in this situation was inappropriate and apologize for not being more sensitive to this reality. It is important to clarify a point in the article below, which is that LAPD did not request the use of the property from UCLA. They requested authorization from the VA directly. In the end that is less important since we became aware of the staging site on Monday. In addition, as is customary in the efforts to coordinate with mutual aid police agencies, we had a Lieutenant at the command post during the protest. The lieutenant left prior to LAPD deciding to, without our knowledge or permission, convert the site to a field processing center later in the evening and he was unaware of that use when he left. The LAPD has acknowledge [stet] that they did not tell UCLA that they were going to use the property for processing of arrestees. I am happy to answer other questions so that the record is clear." 

If earlier we were both incredulous and alarmed that you had no knowledge of the field jail, given its scale, scope, and duration, now we are even more incredulous and alarmed. We are incredulous because none of us as faculty would accept from our students the line of argumentation that VC Beck presented to us last evening. If you were aware that the site was being used as a staging site for the LAPD command post, then the omission of this fact from previous communications with us (which included other details of how the site has been used, for example by LAFD) is a violation of the full truth. And we are alarmed that UCLA leadership is unwilling to acknowledge the direct connection between this command post and the subsequent field jail. Are we as scholars under the impression that the police hand out lemonade to protesters at these “staging areas”? Especially troubling is the detail in VC Beck’s email about the role of what we presume is a UCPD Lieutenant, raising question about active UCPD-UCLA collaboration in the policing of protests.

As we noted in our initial letter, such active collaboration with the police state stands in sharp hypocrisy to the statements of solidarity with protest that the UCLA leadership has issued recently. It undermines our confidence in the sentiment expressed in yesterday’s “Violation of Values” post. The withholding of information, in the face of the anguish and trauma of those detained at the Stadium and despite our quest for the full truth, confirms our concerns about the relationship between UCLA and LAPD and extends to UCPD as well. It reminds us why Black, Brown, and Indigenous students, faculty, students, and workers do not feel safe on this campus, and brings us more forcefully to our call to end UCLA’s relationship with LAPD and other police forces.

We once again ask for a public accounting of all communications, permissions, and agreements pertaining to the use of the Jackie Robinson Stadium AND other UCLA facilities as staging areas and command posts by LAPD. We hope that we do not have to spend more time explaining what we mean by the full truth. This should be evident to all parties concerned.

We once again emphasize that if the field jail was LAPD use of property without authorization from the lessee, in this case UCLA, then we expect the university to seek compensation for such use and invest these resources in a manner that provides a modicum of remedy.

In addition, as noted in our letter of June 3, 2020, starting next week, we the UCLA faculty, will form a Divestment Working Group, which will work closely with student and community organizations, with an initial demand that UCLA divest fully from any relationships with LAPD.

Such a Divestment Working Group will build on the long-standing work of departments, centers, and initiatives at UCLA that are already engaged in studying and dismantling structural racism. We will share with you our concrete, actionable recommendations toward implementing the goal of divestment, as well as that of investing in alternatives to policing.

Sincerely,

The Executive Committee of Concerned UCLA Faculty

Ananya Roy
Laura Abrams
Leisy Abrego
Hannah Appel
Sarah Haley
Kelly Lytle Hernández
Grace Kyungwon Hong
Gaye Theresa Johnson
Michael Lens
Shannon Speed
Noah Zatz
Maite Zubiaurre


Wednesday, June 3, 2020

Wednesday, June 3, 2020
Dear Vice Chancellor Beck,

     We write in response to your communication of June 2, 2020, regarding the use of the Jackie Robinson Stadium to detain protesters and process arrests on the evening of June 1, 2020.

     You state in your letter that “the use of the Jackie Robinson Stadium parking lot as a ‘field jail’ was not done with the administration’s permission, collaboration or knowledge.” You also state that from time to time, city agencies like the Los Angeles Fire Department ask UCLA’s permission to use the parking lot as a staging area during fires or other emergencies” and that UCLA “typically grant[s] those permissions.” You note that this was the case a few weeks agowhen “LAFD asked UCLA’s permission to utilize the parking lot as a COVID‐19 testing area and the university granted that permission.”

     Taking into account these facts, addressing you, Chancellor Block, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Emily Carter, we request the following actions:

1. UCLA leadership issue a public statement that LAPD undertook unauthorized use of the Jackie Robinson Stadium as a field jail on June 1, 2020, and issue a public letter to Chief Michel Moore demanding both explanation and compensation for LAPD’s use of the property without permission from the lessee, i.e. UCLA. Since this amounts to civil trespassing or the commandeering of property, we ask that UCLA leadership, at the very least, demand compensation for this unauthorized use of its property, if not file a formal complaint and charges.  Our UCLA Law faculty stand by to provide guidance and expertise on this matter.

2. Your letter notes that “LAPD has vacated the property” and that UCLA “will inform them that future use as an arrest processing center will not be granted.”

     a) We ask that you share a copy of this specific communication with LAPD immediately with the UCLA community including this group of concerned faculty. This will assure us that UCLA has taken a measure of action.

      b) As per our first letter, we continue to ask that you make public all information you have pertaining to the use of Jackie Robinson Stadium by LAPD on June 1, 2020. We would like to know when and how you were notified of such use and by whom.

     c) Given that UCLA occupies Jackie Robinson Stadium and the surrounding land only under the authority of the West Los Angeles Leasing Act of 2016 and the lease agreement between UCLA and the Department of Veteran Affairs executed on December 23, 2016, both of which provide that UCLA’s activities under the lease will principally benefit military veterans, for whose specific benefit the land was granted to the United States Government, we ask that you make public all information regarding the other uses of the land you have given over to the City of Los Angeles since the execution of the lease, and all communications between you, the City of Los Angeles, and the Department of Veterans Affairs regarding such uses, including communications tending to show that
such activities benefited veterans in any way.

     d) We are not assured that the use of UCLA facilities, whether the Jackie Robinson Stadium or other sites, by LAPD, will not take place in the future. If UCLA leadership, including yourself, was unaware of such use, we are now additionally concerned about the breakdown of lines of communication and reporting within UCLA and between UCLA and city agencies.

Our first letter shared chilling testimony from protesters detained and processed at Jackie Robinson Stadium. We have now heard from more of them, including UCLA students, who were arrested in downtown Los Angeles for curfew violation, bused to the stadium, and held there for seven hours before being processed and released at 3 am onto the streets of Westwood, far from their homes. We have also heard from a criminal defense attorney who was contacted by one of the arrested protesters who needed medical attention. After repeated 9-11 calls received no response, the attorney decided to himself go to the Jackie Robinson Stadium to serve as counsel accompanied by a physician to provide medical help. What the attorney witnessed was an “organized scene” of detention and arrest processing, a massive set-up with many, many buses and scores of LAPD officers. Given the scale, scope, and duration of this field jail, we are incredulous that you and other UCLA leadership were unaware of the situation. How can we be assured that this will not repeat itself, putting many people in harm’s way, only to be later told that it happened without UCLA’s knowledge and permission? Responsibility lies with UCLA whether permission was granted or not.

We ask that UCLA leadership issue a public statement stating that LAPD will not be able to use UCLA facilities, whether those leased or directly owned by the university.

3. This incident has made it clear to us as concerned faculty that LAPD is not a trustworthy partner for UCLA. What is at stake is much more than remedy for unauthorized use of UCLA facilities. As we stated in our first letter, NOW is the time for UCLA to make a robust commitment to ending collaboration with the police state. Across the country, and especially in Los Angeles, community organizations and justice movements are working hard to ensure that public resources are invested in education, health, and housing rather than in policing. It is vitally important that UCLA follow the lead of other public universities such as the University of Minnesota and take action to sever ties with LAPD. Starting next week, we the UCLA faculty, will form a Divestment Working Group, which will work closely with student and community organizations towards the common goal of Divest/ Invest.

We ask that UCLA leadership join us in making an immediate public pledge to such a goal and commit to working with faculty, students, staff, and workers to ensure such outcomes of justice on our campus and for our communities. As faculty, we want UCLA to prioritize the educational mission of teaching and research over policing.

Sincerely,

The Executive Committee of Concerned UCLA Faculty
Ananya Roy
Laura Abrams
Leisy Abrego
Hannah Appel
Sarah Haley
Kelly Lytle Hernández
Grace Kyungwon Hong
Michael Lens
Shannon Speed
Noah Zatz
Maite Zubiaurre

Photo Credit: Daily Bruin
Dear Chancellor Block and Executive Vice-Chancellor Carter [UCLA],

It has come to our attention that last evening, June 1, 2020, a UCLA facility, the Jackie Robinson Stadium, was used by LAPD to detain protesters and process arrests, including arrests of UCLA students. We have heard from the National Lawyers Guild-Los Angeles, arrested UCLA students, and other arrested protesters on this matter.

Testimony from arrested protesters is chilling. Arrested for violation of curfew in downtown Los Angeles, protesters were crowded into LA County Sheriff’s Department buses and brought to UCLA. As they arrived, they looked out of the small windows on these prison buses only to see Bruins logos and signs greeting them at the Jackie Robinson Stadium.

Protesters were held on these buses at UCLA for five to six hours, without access to restrooms, food, water, information, or medical attention. Indeed, there was a medical emergency on one of the buses, one that received a response from the fire department several hours later. All protocols of social distancing were violated by the LA County Sheriff’s Department and LAPD with protesters deliberately crowded into buses and officers not following rules and recommendations established by the City, the County, and the CDC, including wearing masks. The cruel irony that this took place at a location used as a COVID-19 testing site is not lost on those arrested or on us.

When protesters were taken off the buses, they were subject to processing in the parking lot of the stadium and then released, which meant that they were directed to find their way home late at night (between 1:30 am and 3:30 am) from the Jackie Robinson Stadium. Without working cell phones and under conditions of curfew, this was a near impossible task, especially for those unhoused Angelenos who had also been arrested for curfew violation for simply being on the streets of downtown Los Angeles and were now marooned at UCLA.

In addition, protesters, including UCLA students, were arrested in Westwood, again for violation of curfew. They were brought to Jackie Robinson Stadium on LAPD buses after LAPD tried to commandeer a 720 Metro Bus but failed to maneuver it through the streets. We share these details because if you do not already know them, you must know them now.

We write to express our deep concern about these events and the matter of UCLA collaboration with LAPD and other police forces. In recent days, UCLA leadership has shared statements of solidarity denouncing institutionalized racism and recognizing the importance of protest against such racism. Last night’s use of Jackie Robinson Stadium stands in sharp hypocrisy to these statements. We have heard from our students and we agree that such solidarity statements must be accompanied not by collaboration with the police but by concrete steps that move us towards the divestment of UCLA from LAPD and other forms of policing, similar to the prompt action taken by the President of the University of Minnesota following the murder of Mr. George Floyd. In the coming months, we intend to work towards this goal in partnership with student and community organizations. We look forward to being in dialogue and alliance with you on this.

That said, we also seek a full accounting of the events of last evening. The Jackie Robinson Stadium is a UCLA facility, implicating all of us in the use of that space to detain protestors and process arrests. It is our understanding that UCLA holds the lease to the Jackie Robinson Stadium and its parking lots, which sit on VA grounds. We ask for a detailed, public statement on the chain of events, decisions, and command lines that led to the use of this facility by LAPD and its mobile processing units last evening and a copy of any agreements that may govern LAPD’s use of this UCLA facility. We also ask for an immediate cessation of the use of this facility or any other UCLA facility by LAPD and other police forces.

Last evening, UCLA students were arrested for engaging in the constitutionally protected right to peacefully protest against racial injustice, which is pervasive in American policing. They were detained and processed at a stadium on their own campus named after Jackie Robinson, an icon of the long and unfinished struggle for Black freedom. Today many of them are trying to complete final examinations and final assignments. This is not the UCLA education and experience that they deserve.

But this is not just about our students. As UCLA faculty, we refuse to allow our university to serve as a police outpost at this moment of national uprising and at any other time. As a public university, we serve the public and our students, and this in turn requires dismantling the mechanisms of punishment that have historically caused undeniable harm to communities in Los Angeles.

A few days ago, we were glad to read your statement which noted: "Still, we recognize that UCLA also can and must do better. As campus leaders, we recommit ourselves to ensuring that our policies and actions value the lives, safety and dignity of every Bruin." This is our chance to do better.
We look forward to receiving a full and detailed accounting of last evening’s incident and to working with you and the rest of the UCLA leadership on divestment from collaborations with LAPD and other police forces.

Sincerely,

Ananya Roy
Professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare, and Geography
The Meyer and Renee Luskin Chair in Inequality and Democracy
Director, UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy

Hannah Appel
Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Global Studies
Associate Director, UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy

Laura Abrams
Professor and Chair of Social Welfare

Karen Umemoto
Helen and Morgan Chu Chair, Asian American Studies Center
Professor of Urban Planning and Asian American Studies

Michael Lens
Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy
Associate Director, UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies

Kelly Lytle Hernández
Professor of History, African American Studies, and Urban Planning
The Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair of History
Director, Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA
Director, Million Dollar Hoods

Mishuana Goeman (Tonawanda Band of Seneca)
Associate Professor of Gender Studies
Chair of American Indian Studies IDP
Special Advisor to the Chancellor on Native American and Indigenous Affairs

Eric Avila
Chair and Professor, César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies
Professor of History and Urban Planning

Gaye Theresa Johnson
Associate Professor of African American Studies and Chicana and Chicano Studies

Leisy Abrego
Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies

Maite Zubiaurre
Professor of Germanic Languages and Spanish & Portuguese

Aradhna Tripati
Associate Professor, UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability
Director and Founder, UCLA Center for Diverse Leadership in Science

Rachel C. Lee
Director, Center for the Study of Women
Professor of English, Gender Studies & the Institute of Society and Genetics

Elizabeth Marchant
Chair of Gender Studies
Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Comparative Literature

Sherene H. Razack
Distinguished Professor of Gender Studies
Penny Kanner Endowed Chair in Women's Studies

Grace Kyungwon Hong
Associate Director, Center for the Study of Women
Professor of Asian American Studies and Gender Studies

Vinay Lal
Professor of History and Asian American Studies

Matt Barreto
Professor of Political Science

Chris Tilly
Professor of Urban Planning

Kent Wong
Director, UCLA Labor Center

Abel Valenzuela Jr.
Special Advisor to the Chancellor on Immigration Policy
Director, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment
Professor of Chicana/o Studies and Urban Planning

Sonja Diaz,
Director, Latino Policy and Politics Initiative

Paul Ong
Professor of Urban Planning and Asian American Studies
Director, UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge

Victor Bascara
Chair and Associate Professor of Asian American Studies

Renee Tajima-Peña
Professor of Asian American Studies
Director, UCLA Center for EthnoCommunications

Akhil Gupta
Professor of Anthropology
Director, Center for India and South Asia

Chon Noriega
Professor of Film, Television, and Digital Media
Director, UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center

Shannon Speed (Chickasaw)
Professor of Gender Studies and Anthropology
Director, American Indian Studies Center

Chandra L. Ford
Associate Professor of Department of Community Health Sciences
Director, Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice & Health

Bryonn Bain
Associate Professor of African American Studies and World Arts and Cultures/ Dance
Director, UCLA Prison Education Program

Marcus Anthony Hunter
Scott Waugh Endowed Chair in the Division of the Social Sciences
Professor of Sociology
Chair, Department of African American Studies

Noah Zatz
Professor of Law

Eric Sheppard
Professor of Geography

Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris
Professor of Urban Planning
Associate Dean, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs

E. Tendayi Achiume
Professor of Law, Faculty Director, Promise Institute for Human Rights
United Nations Special Rapporteur on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related
Intolerance

Walter Allen
Distinguished Professor, Allan Murray Cartter Professor of Higher Education

Sameer M. Ashar
Vice Dean for Experiential Education and Professor of Law

Devon Carbado
Associate Vice Chancellor of BruinX for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
The Honorable Harry Pregerson Professor of Law

Jessica Cattelino
Professor of Anthropology

Kamari Clark
Professor of Anthropology

LaToya Baldwin Clark
Assistant Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law

Cheryl Harris
Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Professor in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
UCLA Law School

Peter Hudson
Professor of History and African American Studies

Jasleen Kohli
Director, Critical Race Studies Program, UCLA School of Law

Jemima Pierre
Professor of Anthropology and African American Studies

Brad Sears
Associate Dean of Public Interest Law, UCLA School of Law

Caroline Streeter
Professor of English

Jason Throop
Professor and Chair of Anthropology

Alicia Viriani
Associate Director of the Criminal Justice Program at UCLA School of Law

Alex L. Wang
Professor of Law

Karin Wang
Executive Director, Epstein Program and Professor from Practice, UCLA School of Law

Andrew Whitcup
Lecturer, UCLA School of Law

Daniel G. Solorzano
Professor of Social Science & Comparative Education

Kimberlé Crenshaw
Distinguished Professor of Law, Promise Institute Chair in Human Rights, UCLA School of Law

Brenda Kim
Manager of Operations and Events, Office of Public Interest Programs, UCLA School of Law

Joseph P. Berra
Human Rights in the Americas Project Director, UCLA School of Law

Kate Mackintosh
Executive Director, Promise Institute for Human Rights, UCLA School of Law

Laura Gómez
Professor of Law
Faculty Director, Critical Race Studies Program at UCLA Law

Beth A. Colgan
Professor of Law