The National Book Foundation’s Literature for Justice program “highlight[s] books that contribute to the dialogue around mass incarceration and justice.” Recently, books by UCLA’s Dr. Sarah Haley and Dr. Kelly Lytle Hernández were selected to be on this year’s list.

Dr. Haley’s book, No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity, and Dr. Lytle Hernández’s book, City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965, were selected with five others for this year’s list.

LA Social Science congratulates both Dr. Haley and Dr. Lytle Hernández.

To see the full list of books selected, click HERE.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Celia Lacayo, Associate Director of Community Engagement in the UCLA Division of Social Sciences, contributed to the KCET documentary, 187: The Rise of the Latino Vote. It focuses on a pivotal moment of California history, the passage of California’s Proposition 187 in 1994, which sought to deny public services to undocumented immigrants. The measure which sought to discourage the “immigrant threat,” served to mobilize non-immigrants and immigrants in Latino communities as well as their allies across the state. It transformed the state’s electoral politics.

Check out the next telecast on election day, Tuesday, November 3, 2020 at 6:30 PM PT on KCET-HD OR watch the full episode now HERE.

In addition to being an associate editor and contributor to LA Social Science, Dr. Lacayo is an adjunct professor in the UCLA Chicana/o & Central American Studies Department and the African American Studies Department.

As a guest author for Scatterplot, Dr. Aliza Luft, UCLA assistant professor of sociology, makes the case that American leaders have switched sides, embraced the Nazi separation playbook during this current administration, and turned their backs on agreements that Americans made during the “Greatest Generation” seventy-eight year ago. Dr. Luft makes clear that children are being hurt by xenophobic policy, and she reminds us of history, while allowing no excuses for inaction.

Dr. Luft’s historical comparison is timely and a call to action. To read the essay, click HERE.

UCLA Anthropology alumnus and Professor Robert B. Lemelson has made a generous gift to establish The Study of Black Life and Racial Inequality Program Fund that will provide critical support for graduate and undergraduate students who share a commitment to the study of Black Life and Racial Inequality in Anthropology.

As part of Anthropology’s commitment to ensure ongoing financial support for transformative positive social change, as well as provide much-needed material support for students engaged with these issues, Professor Lemelson’s gift will pave the way for more sustainable future support from alumni and friends who share Anthropology’s vision of impactful research and social justice.

To build on this vision, the Department of Anthropology is excited to support a student-initiated group focused on academic engagement, mentorship, and the professional development of Black graduate students in Anthropology. The Department will also offer a new mentoring course for diverse undergraduates led by the student group to be inaugurated in the Winter of 2021. Undergraduates in the course who are also interested in pursuing independent research will be encouraged to apply to the Department’s prestigious undergraduate Lemelson Anthropological Honors Program to further develop their research and professional careers.

The Department of Anthropology is deeply grateful to Professor Lemelson for his support of this vision and his generous gift, which will ensure the program’s success in years to come.

We invite the community to join us in this important initiative to support the study of Black Life and racial inequality by making an online gift HERE. If you are interested in making a gift by check, please contact Lisa Mohan at lmohan@support.ucla.edu. We appreciate your support of this important program.

 

LA Social Science recently spoke with Dr. Shannon Speed, a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, Professor of Anthropology, and Director of the UCLA American Indian Studies Center, about the newly launched Hate Crime Map. This research and application looks to address the need for a publicly available resource documenting hate crimes.

Hate Crimes are a national and global human rights problem. According to the latest FBI statistics, hate crimes in the United States rose almost 22% between 2015 and 2018, with the vast majority reported as motivated by race, ethnicity or ancestry bias (59.6% in 2018). However, due to under reporting and inconsistent definitions of hate crime among states, statistics are notoriously unreliable, while the need for a publicly available resource documenting hate crimes is great.

The Hate Crime Map addresses this need by offering an anonymous, crowd-sourced platform for victims of hate-based assault and crime to record their experiences. In addition, the map includes a subset of COVID-related hate crimes. It is searchable, producing pie charts and tables that break down the types and causes (race, gender, religion) of the attacks by state so that researchers and policy makers have more complete information. The map includes data provided by ProPublica, the Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center, and from published and online sources.

www.hatecrimemap.com

Stop Hate: Map the Attack!

To read the UCLA Newsroom story about the launch of the Hate Crime Map, click HERE.

 

Subscribe to L.A. Social Science and be the first to learn more insight and knowledge from UCLA’s Division of Social Science experts and other faculty about upcoming video/audio sessions and posts about current issues.

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/

 

Subscribe to L.A. Social Science and be the first to learn more insight and knowledge from UCLA’s Division of Social Science experts and other faculty about upcoming video/audio sessions and posts about current issues.

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

 

Subscribe to L.A. Social Science and be the first to learn more insight and knowledge from UCLA’s Division of Social Science experts and other faculty about upcoming video/audio sessions and posts about current issues.

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.