LA Social Science wants to highlight a summer course being offered within the Division of Social Sciences at UCLA.

UCLA summer courses are open to BOTH UCLA students and NON-UCLA students. All Summer 2021 courses are being offered online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. You can enroll as long as you are 15 years of age or older by the first day of summer and you do NOT have to be enrolled in an academic institution in order to participate in UCLA summer sessions. For more information, click HERE.

UCLA’s Communication Department has amazing courses this summer. Check out Comm 109: Entrepreneurial Communication offered in Summer Session C (starting August 2). Comm 109 fulfills crossover requirements for a Comm Practicum AND Comm Additional Area Elective. It also fulfills a requirement for the Entrepreneurship Minor. Enroll here TODAY!

The UCLA Labor Center has received $15 million from the 2021-22 California Budget to renovate its historic building that will be renamed for the civil rights icon Rev. James Lawson Jr. This will establish a permanent location for the UCLA Labor Center, which believes that a public university belongs to the people and should advance quality education and employment.

Reverend James M. Lawson Jr. is a civil rights and workers’ rights icon who worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In 2018, UCLA awarded Rev. Lawson the UCLA Medal, the university’s highest honor.

State Senator Durazo (D-Los Angeles), State Assembly member Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles) and State Assembly member Santiago (D-Los Angeles) championed the effort by submitting legislative member requests to their respective budget leaders. The California Black, Latino and LGBTQ caucuses and numerous labor, faith, and educational organizations throughout the state also supported the requests.

“I had the privilege of introducing this initiative before the California State Senate,” said Durazo. “I am excited that the UCLA Labor Center will have a permanent home in my senatorial district, and that we will name the building in honor of an outstanding national American hero and my good friend Rev. James Lawson Jr.”

To learn more about the renaming and the renovation, please click HERE.

Here at UCLA, community engaged scholarship is not an option – it is an imperative. Los Angeles is a profoundly diverse, multicultural city and a gateway to the rest of the planet. In the Division of Social Sciences, we take our location and our embeddedness in Los Angeles very seriously. The findings that come out of our research are findings that can be applied to real world community problems. In this sense, we are engaging LA to change the world.

 

LA Social Science is pleased to share this video highlighting two researchers, Dr. Jason De León and Dr. Jessica Cattelino, and the important community engaged scholarship they are leading in the social sciences.

As a public institution, our work is ultimately in service of you, our community. By engaging LA, we are changing the world.

Presenting UCLA’s first conference on

Data-Informed Governance (DIG)

July 7, 2021

Online, starting at 8 a.m. PDT

REGISTER NOW

Watch three panel discussions featuring experts and peers from the public, private, and civic sectors.

Exchange innovative, actionable approaches to real-world policy issues.

Find out why it is increasingly critical for state and local governments to become technology proficient, using data to inform critical policy decisions.

Join with participants from a wide spectrum of organizations and geographies – from local nonprofits to national research institutes, small cities to regional governing bodies.

LEARN MORE

The DIG Conference is a convening of people from diverse backgrounds that aims to demonstrate the potential for structured peer-to-peer learning on this subject. This cross-section of attendee profiles encourages the advancement of data-centric solutions for public policy that are accessible, scalable, and pragmatic.


DIG is made possible thanks to the support of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, the Luskin Center for Innovation at UCLA, the College of Social Sciences, the LA Social Science Initiative, the Anderson School of Management, the Ziman Center for Real Estate, and Impact@Anderson.

UCLA Labor Center‘s Director Kent Wong, was recognized as one of the “Giants of Justice” yesterday, June 3rd, by the Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE). CLUE “is an organization that brings together clergy and lay leaders of all faiths with workers, immigrants, and low-income families in the cause of a just economy that works for all and protects those most vulnerable.” Director Wong was honored along with faith leaders and community activists in Southern California who inspire others to build a just and sacred society.

LA Social Science would like to congratulate Director Wong for this well deserved honor.

Dr. Justin Dunnavant, an incoming professor in the Department of Anthropology, has been selected as one of “15 global changemakers” for the National Geographic 2021 Emerging Explorer cohort.

National Geographic Society states: “These 15 individuals are conducting innovative work focused on a range of topics such as inventing space technologies, ocean exploration, understanding the past through archaeology and anthropology, species conservation, storytelling, and elevating young voices for the future of education.”

Dr. Dunnavant is currently a provost’s postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt University’s Spatial Analysis Research Laboratory and will be an assistant professor in UCLA’s Anthropology Department starting this fall. His current research in the U.S. Virgin Islands investigates the relationship between ecology and enslavement in the former Danish West Indies. Dr. Dunnavant is also co-founder and president of the Society of Black Archaeologists, an American Academy of Underwater Sciences scientific diver, a consultant for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, and a 2021 inductee to The Explorers Club. His research has been featured on Netflix’s Explained and Hulu’s Your Attention Please and in American Archaeology and Science magazines.

To read Dr. Dunnavant’s latest article, “Craft an African American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act,” in NATURE, click HERE.

Please join the Department of African American Studies at UCLA as it commemorates the Tulsa Massacre Centennial beginning TODAY throughout the Memorial Day weekend.  To learn more, click HERE to visit a special edition of their website.

Events

On the 100th anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, this series, co-presented by the UCLA Department of African American Studies and the UCLA Hammer Museum, unpacks the history and legacy of an under-examined chapter of racial violence in the United States. These five online panels will cover the history of the massacre and its on-screen representations, as well other instances of domestic terrorism against communities of color in the United States, the renewed urgency and viability of reparations, and the economic empowerment of Black Americans.

The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: A Historical Context

Tuesday, June 1, 2021, 5:00 PM PDT

Professor Brenda E. Stevenson moderates an online conversation with Karlos K. Hill and Hannibal Johnson, both authors and experts on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, in which a white mob assaulted residents, looted, and destroyed their homes, churches, schools, and businesses in the predominantly Black neighborhood and business district of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The panel discusses the history of Black migration to Oklahoma, the Jim Crow realities of the early 20th century, the facts surrounding the Tulsa massacre, and the immediate aftermath in which hundreds of Black Americans were dead, homeless, or imprisoned, their families and financial lives devastated.

An Associate Professor and Chair of the Clara Luper Department of African and African-American Studies at the University of Oklahoma, Hill is the founder and chair of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Commission. His most recent book is The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: A Photographic History. An attorney, author, and highly regarded public historian, Johnson is the author of Black Wall Street 100: An American City Grapples with its Historical Racial Trauma.

 

Tulsa on Screen: Watchmen with Damon Lindelof & Cord Jefferson

Thursday, June 3, 2021, 5:00 PM PDT

RSVP HERE

In this online program, professor Brenda E. Stevenson joins writer and producer Damon Lindelof, creator of HBO’s Watchmen series, and Watchmen writer Cord Jefferson to discuss how they crafted the series’ remarkable representation of the Tulsa Race Massacre. The series explores the generational trauma of the massacre within the context of an alternative U.S. history. Lindelof and Jefferson discuss why they centered Watchmen on this largely ignored event in American history, as well as how and why popular culture can continue to confront history, racism, and structural violence.

Darnell Hunt, Ph.D.

Dean, UCLA Division of Social Sciences

Professor of Sociology and African American Studies

Invites you to attend the

Dean’s Salon

2021 Hollywood Diversity Report: Lessons Learned

Monday, June 7, 2021 at 4:00 p.m. PDT

Live Streaming via Zoom

featuring a conversation with

Ana-Christina Ramón, Ph.D.

Director of Research and Civic Engagement, UCLA Division of Social Sciences

Amberia Allen, Ph.D.

Writer and Comedian

Nancy Wang Yuen, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Sociology, Biola University

moderated by

Darnell Hunt, Ph.D.

Dean, UCLA Division of Social Sciences

Professor of Sociology and African American Studies

 

RSVP Here: https://ucla.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_TE0VA8alTpSplOvMsAW12Q

Please submit your questions in advance of the webinar via email to:
hnadworny@support.ucla.edu (by Friday, June 4th at 12:00 p.m. PDT)
Instructions to join the webinar will be provided once your registration has been confirmed.

Dr. Paul Ong, Center for Neighborhood Knowledge Director and UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs Professor, speaks with LA Social Science about the challenges the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, big data research, and the xenophobic racism the AAPI community face here in Los Angeles and elsewhere.

Interview Chapters:

0:39 – Welcome Professor Ong

0:45 – Professor Ong Research Introduction

1:42 – COVID-19 Pandemic effort on the AAPI Community

4:33 – Work being done on the ground

7:35 – Big Data connection to Professor Ong research

10:20 – Information about CNK (Center for Neighborhood Knowledge).

13:30 – Goals for your research and your center

Learn more about Dr. Ong and the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge team by visiting their website at https://knowledge.luskin.ucla.edu.

 

Subscribe to LA 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.

UCLA LPPI Founding Director Sonja Diaz in conversation with Juan Cartegena, president and general counsel of Latino Justice – PRLDEF.

What would our criminal legal system look like if it was truly designed to reduce harm, advance public safety, and end America’s legacy as the world’s leading incarcerator?

That was the question on everyone’s mind last week as our nation’s leading Latino elected officials, advocates, academics, and media personalities convened to grapple with the issue of criminal justice — an issue of intense national debate since last summer. Hosted by the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative (UCLA LPPI), LatinoJustice PRLDEF, Drug Policy Alliance, and the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators, the convening Activating Justice Through a Latinx Lens” was aimed at creating greater visibility of Latinos within the justice reform movement, identifying opportunities to build solidarity with other communities most impacted by the criminal legal system, and advancing transformative policy aimed at justice rather than punishment.

“For too long Latinos have been left out of the criminal justice conversation, even though we are the second most negatively impacted group by numbers behind Black people when it comes to our criminal legal systems,” said Sonja Diaz, founding director of UCLA LPPI.

Crimmigration panel moderated by Jonathan Jayes-Greene of the Marguerite Casey Foundation and featuring Jacinta Gonzalez (Mijente), Greisa Martinez Rosas (United We Dream), Jennifer M. Chacón, (UCLA) and Abraham Paulos (Black Alliance for Just Immigration)

With conversations led by UCLA LPPI faculty experts such as Dr. Jennifer Chacón, over 1,000 participants tuned in to hear from a multiracial cadre of 40 speakers covering topics from ending youth incarceration, to the movement to defund the police, to the intersection of the criminal legal and immigration systems — all through a Latinx lens. Featured speakers like renowned journalist Maria Hinojosa and author Julissa Arce created the opportunity for lively discussions about the opportunity to create new, more truthful and inclusive narratives in the criminal justice space and develop tailored solutions that address the underlying structural and systemic deficiencies that drive people to engage in harmful acts.

“It was so exciting to see this come together with so many brilliant people who were able to bring fresh perspective on the issue, the challenges and opportunities before us and how we can work in solidarity across race and experience to achieve common goals that make our communities safer and healthier,” said Paula Nazario, a UCLA LPPI fellow and one of the lead organizers for the convening.

Opening Plenary Moderated by Latino USA’s Maria Hinojosa with Author and Education Advocate Julissa Arce, MacArthur Genius Award Winner and UCLA LPPI Faculty Member Dr. Kelly Lytle-Hernández, UCLA, Judge Natalia Cornelio for the 351st District Court, Harris County Texas and David Luis ‘Suave’ Gonzalez, host of Death by Incarceration and The Suave Podcasts

One of the most engaging discussions of the two-day convening was the opening plenary and break-out sessions that followed. The panel discussion, which featured UCLA LPPI faculty and scholar Dr. Kelly Lytle-Hernández gave attendees key insight into the impacts of the criminal legal system on Latinos, the structural racism propping up our entire system of incarceration, and how the criminalization of immigrants is working to further expand systems of mass incarceration rather than contract them. The subsequent breakout sessions then enabled attendees to think about how they can demand better data that creates a clearer picture of the challenges and opportunities ahead and how Latino facing organizations — both within and outside the justice reform space – can work together to create broad change within these systems.

Over the course of the convening dialogue continually underscored the immense data and knowledge gap that obscures the true impact of the criminal legal system on Latino individuals, their families and their communities. It also highlighted that if this gap persists there is a risk of creating solutions that fail to address challenges unique to Latinx individuals who are systems-impacted and recreating inequities that exist in our current criminal legal system.

The two-day meeting closed out with a conversation with Juan Cartegena, president and general counsel of Latino Justice PRLDEF. During that discussion he highlighted that while our criminal legal system hasn’t changed much in the past five decades, we are on the precipice of big change — change made possible by communities who see an unprecedented opportunity to fundamentally transform our systems of justice.

“We cannot lose sight of the fact that there have been amazing opportunities for organizing people around truth, and for having that truth talk to power,” said Cartegena. I think we’re stronger than ever to actually have conversations about dismantling systems, about what it means to invest in our communities in different ways and to think outside of every box at every corner so we can get things done.”