On October 20, UCLA’s Dr. Safiya Noble will be in conversation with TIME and The Duke and Duchess of Sussex for a specially curated TIME100 Talks episode that will dive into the state of our digital experience. In her segment with Duchess Meghan and Duke Harry, which also includes Tristan Harris of the new film, “The Social Dilemma,” she talks about the need for public policy and a strengthening of institutions like libraries, schools and universities as a democratic counterweight to Big Tech. Professor Noble is the Co-Director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry where she co-leads the Minderoo Initiative on Technology and Power.

Register to watch by clicking HERE.

 

 

 

 

 

Two UCLA alumni experts explain the importance of Proposition 16. Professors Maria Ledesma and OiYan Poon give a full account of the importance of Affirmative Action and how the elimination of this policy in California heavily decreased opportunities and access for minorities and women. They further explain how critical it is to vote in the upcoming election and specifically address the positive impact of passing Proposition 16 in California.

Interview Chapters:

0:04 – Introduction

1:40 – Why was affirmative action needed?

6:20 – Why did voters originally pass Prop 209 (that eliminated affirmative action) in 1996?

11:32 – What are some additional myths about affirmative action?

19:50 – What was the impact after Prop 209 was passed in 1996?

22:19 – Why is Prop 16 so important today? And how will it make California strong?

28:25 – Conclusion

 

Register to vote in California (Deadline Oct. 19, 2020) and other official information on voting: https://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/voter-info/index.htm

Official voter guide on prop 16: https://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/propositions/16/

 

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Darnell Hunt, Ph.D., Dean of UCLA’s Division of Social Sciences, Professor of Sociology and African American Studies,

invites you to attend the inaugural Social Sciences Dean’s Salon:

“Protecting the Right to Vote in the 2020 Presidential Election”

 Monday, October 19, 2020 at 4:00 p.m. PDT

Live streaming via Zoom featuring a conversation with the following:

Matt Barreto

Professor, UCLA Department of Political Science and César A. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies

Chad W. Dunn

Director of Litigation, UCLA Voting Rights Project

Latino Policy & Politics Initiative

Lorrie Frasure

Acting Director, Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies

Associate Professor, UCLA Departments of Political Science and African American Studies

Natalie Masuoka

Associate Professor, UCLA Department of Political Science

Chair and Associate Professor, UCLA Department of Asian American Studies

moderated by

Darnell Hunt, Ph.D.

Dean, UCLA Division of Social Sciences

Professor of Sociology and African American Studies

To RSVP for this event, click HERE

Please submit your questions in advance of the webinar via email to:

hnadworny@support.ucla.edu (by Friday, October 16 at 12:00 p.m.)

Instructions to join the webinar will be provided once your registration has been confirmed.

 

 

In the latest interview in the book series, UCLA Professor Laura E. Gomez discusses her new book Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism where she provides a historical and comprehensive examination of how Latinos have become constructed as a racialized group in the United States. Professor Gomez also offers clear and powerful strategies to combat racism against Latinos in the United States.

Interview Chapters:

0:57 – What is the genesis of this book?

3:18 – How is Latin American history connected to Latinos becoming a racial group in the US?

6:06 – Latino integration into America?

9:49 – What are the racial barriers Latinos face?

15:37 – When does the book come out? And why should we get it?

To learn more, check out Professor Gomez’s book Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism

 

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BBC’s Newsday interviewed Dr. Desi Rodriguez-Lonebear, UCLA Associate Professor of Sociology and American Indian Studies and a Northern Cheyenne tribal citizen.  She discusses how COVID-19 has hit Native American reservations like hers. “Every day there are funerals. We’ve lost so many people that if you actually look at the proportion of people we have lost to Covid in our community it would equal about 1.3 million Americans.”  To listen to the full interview, click HERE.

U Heard It Here

“The 2020 Campaign for the Hardest Job in the World”

Featuring a conversation with John Dickerson (Correspondent, 60 Minutes and CBS News; Author, The Hardest Job in the World)

and Dr. Lynn Vavreck (Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics)

Tuesday, October 6, 2020

5:00 p.m. -6:00 p.m. PDT

Live streaming via zoom.

RSVP link: https://ucla.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_90lJmq1TSWubJidThX-_Og

In the latest interview in the book series, Dr. Norma Mendoza-Denton, UCLA Anthropology Professor, discusses her highly anticipated, co-edited book Language in the Trump Era: Scandals and Emergencies that examines the power of language and how President Trump has used it to further his agenda.

Interview Chapters:

0:00 – Intro

1:15 – What made you decide to do a book on language in the Trump era?

2:14 – What is the power of language?

5:44 – How has Trump’s language regarding women, Latinos, Muslims, LGBTQ+ impacted society?

10:04 – What is the impact of social media and 24-hour news cycle on spreading narratives?

12:40 – What do these narratives say about Trump and those who agree with him?

19:06 – Why is this an essential book to pick up right now?

To learn more, check out Dr. Mendoza-Denton’s book Language in the Trump Era: Scandals and Emergencies.

 

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Dr. H. Samy Alim, UCLA Professor of Anthropology and David O. Sears Presidential Endowed Chair in the Division of Social Sciences, and Dr. Geneva Smitherman, Michigan State University Distinguished Professor Emerita, recently released an opinion piece in The New York Times titled “Of Course Kamala Harris Is Articulate.” They challenge the often used description that high-achieving Black people are “articulate.” They assert that these types of descriptions are highly problematic and offensive, because the exceptional descriptions imply that the opposite is true of other Black people. As co-authors of the book Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the U.S., Drs. Alim and Smitherman further explain why comments like these denigrate Black Americans, even if done unintentionally.

To read the full op-ed, please click HERE.

Left image: The inaugural public event hosted by the Black Feminism Initiative, held in February, featured a conversation between local reproductive justice advocate Kimberly Durdin, left, and UCLA graduate student Ariel Hart.
Top right image: Audience at the event.
Bottom right from left: Kali Tambree and Jaimie Crumley, student co-coordinators of the Black Feminism Initiative.

The UCLA Newsroom recently spotlighted the UCLA Black Feminism Initiative, which was launched by the Center for the Study of Women in 2019 under the leadership of Dr. Sarah Haley. Its mission is to support, develop and perpetuate Black feminist scholarship and ideas among the campus community. It also offers mutual aid for the interdisciplinary approach and community-engaged research of its graduate students. Dr. Haley believes this initiative will make higher education and UCLA more aware of the work of Black feminists of the past, present, and future.

“In the current cultural moment, Black feminism has a lot to teach us all about institutionalized modes of care, and institutionalized modes of harm,” Dr. Haley is quoted as saying about the Black Feminism Initiative. To read the fully story written by Jessica Wolf, click HERE.

 

Click HERE to learn more about the Black Feminism Initiative and click HERE to learn more about the Center for the Study of Women.

 

In the latest interview of the book series, we learn that one in four people went to debtors’ prison. The Poverty of Disaster is a historical account of financial insecurity in Eighteenth-Century England. Dr. Tawny Paul‘s approach to look at everyday economics and how it impacts the social and emotional lives of the English middle class leads to uncovering how incarceration and fear played a role in the precariousness of their status. This book also speaks to the economic crisis today and traces the continuities of a capitalist system. 
Interview Chapters:
0:00 – Intro
0:36 – Genesis of the Book
1:49 – Book summary
3:48 – Other major findings, including debtor’s prison
5:20 – The role of fear
7:55 – How findings connect to current events
10:59 – Who would benefit from reading this book?

To learn more, check out Dr. Paul’s book The Poverty of Disaster: Debt and Insecurity in Eighteenth-Century Britain.

 

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