UCSC Institute for Social Transformation

Abolition Beyond the State
2021-04-06 09:00 - 10:30 (America/Los_Angeles)
w/ Sadie Barnette, J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Zoé Samudzi, and Eric Stanley.

What role can the arts take in the movement to abolish prisons in addition to abolishing the society that upholds them? How can art and culture elevate other ways of living together, without relying on the fences, walls, and cages, which are both imagined and already practiced? Visualizing Abolition continues with Sadie Barnette, J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Zoé Samudzi, and Eric Stanley discussing Abolition Beyond the State.

Visualizing Abolition is a series of online events organized by Professor Gina Dent, Feminist Studies and Dr. Rachel Nelson, Director, Institute of the Arts and Sciences. The events accompany Barring Freedom, an exhibition of contemporary art on view at San José Museum of Art October 30, 2020-April 25, 2021. Solitary Garden, a public art project about mass incarceration and solitary confinement, is concurrently on view at UC Santa Cruz.

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Eric A. Stanley An assistant professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. They are the author of Atmospheres of Vioelnce: Trans/ Queer Antagnoism and the Ungovernable (forthcoming Duke UP) and the coeditor of Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility and Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex.

Zoé Samudzi Samudzi’s research work engages the colonization of South West Africa (now Namibia) and genocidal productions of African identities on the continent. She is the graduate student intern at both UCSF’s Multicultural Resource Center and the LGBT Resource Center. Zoé received her MSc in Health, Community, and Development from the London School of Economics, and her B.A. in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh. Her work seeks to merge political theory, visual studies, and critical approaches to science in service of a multidisciplinary means of articulating blackness(es). Her writing has appeared in The New Inquiry, The New Republic, Art in America, Hyperallergic, and Arts. Black, and she is a contributing writer at Jewish Currents. Along with William C. Anderson, she is the co-author of As Black as Resistance: Finding the Conditions for Our Liberation (AK Press).

Sadie Barnette Barnette earned her BFA from CalArts and her MFA from the University of California, San Diego. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally and is in the permanent collections of museums such as LACMA, Berkeley Art Museum, the California African American Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem (where she was also Artist-in-Residence), Brooklyn Museum and the Guggenheim. She is the recipient of Art Matters and Artadia awards and has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Artforum, and Vogue. She lives in Oakland, CA and is represented by Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles and Jessica Silverman Gallery in San Francisco.

J. Kēhaulani Kauanui(Kanaka Maoli) She is a Professor of American Studies and affiliate faculty in Anthropology at Wesleyan University, where she teaches courses on Indigenous studies, critical race studies, settler colonial studies, and anarchist studies. Kauanui earned her doctorate in History of Consciousness and the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity (Duke University Press 2008) and Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism (Duke University Press 2018). She is also the editor of Speaking of Indigenous Politics: Conversations with Activists, Scholars, and Tribal Leaders (University of Minnesota Press 2018), which is based on the radio program she produced and hosted for seven years, “Indigenous Politics: From Native New England and Beyond” that was widely syndicated through the Pacifica radio network. Kauanui currently serves as a co-producer for an anarchist politics show called, “Anarchy on Air,” a majority-POC show co-produced with a group of Wesleyan students, which builds on her earlier work on a related program, “Horizontal Power Hour.” She is one of the six original co-founders of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA), established in 2008. Kauanui also serves as an advisory board member of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge with the Homeless Garden Project
2021-03-20 04:30 - 05:30
You’re invited to join the Homeless Garden Project (HGP) in a transformative 21-day challenge to learn, reflect and discuss how we can build a thriving and inclusive community, workforce, and local food system. For the 21 days, HGP will be hosting weekly discussion sessions and engaging in discussions on social media and in emails.

The free online event will feature keynote remarks from U.S. Representative Jimmy Panetta, performances from Senderos and a presentation from Challenge organizers Curtis Ogden and Karen Spiller of FSNE.

You will learn how to participate in the Challenge and have an opportunity to reflect on equity in our local food system.

Senderos will share their Guelaguetza dance performance to celebrate the rich culture of our community and the spirit of collaboration.

More details and registration here: https://bit.ly/HGP21Day

Co-sponsored by the Institute for Social Transformation.

The Homeless Garden Project is joining with Food Solutions New England (FSNE) to share their 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Food Challenge, which runs April 5-25, 2021. The goal of the program is to heighten understanding and address racism, as we work to fulfill our vision of a thriving and inclusive community, workforce, local food system and to inspire you to act in your local community to share your insights. We’re excited to partner with Food Solutions New England to offer this challenge. You can learn more about the challenge, what to expect when you participate, why it lasts 21-days, how it got started and more here: https://foodsolutionsne.org/21-day-racial-equity-habit-building-challenge/

LASER Talks with Jasmine Alinder & Katharyne Mitchell
2021-03-11 09:00 - 10:30
Jasmine Alinder, “Representing Japanese American Incarceration.” Katharyne Mitchell, “Sanctuary Space and Insurgent Memory.”

Leonardo Art & Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) is an international program bringing together artists, scientists, and scholars for presentations and conversations. Join us at 5 p.m. for presentations by Dean of the Humanities and professor of History, Dr. Jasmine Alinder and Katharyne Mitchell, Dean of the Social Sciences and professor of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz.

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Dr. Jasmine Alinder Dr. Jasmine Alinder is Dean of the Humanities and Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Alinder is an interdisciplinary, community-engaged scholar and teacher of public history, the history of photography, and the history of Japanese-Americans during World War II. As a historian of photography, her research investigates what she characterizes as “the presumptive right to the camera.” She earned her doctorate in the history of art at the University of Michigan, with an emphasis on the history of photography, her M.A. in art history at the University of New Mexico, and an A.B. in art history from Princeton University. She joined UC Santa Cruz from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she was a professor of history and associate dean of the humanities in the College of Letters and Science.

Katharyne Mitchell Mitchell is Dean of the Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her current research focuses on the ethics, practices and politics of church sanctuary in the protection of refugees in Europe. Recent books include Making Workers: Radical Geographies of Education (2018), and the co-edited Handbook on Critical Geographies of Migration (2019). She is working on a monograph entitled Sanctuary Space: Memories of Insurgency, and an edited volume on philanthropy and humanitarianism. Mitchell is the author of over 100 articles and book chapters and the recipient of grants from the MacArthur Foundation, Spencer Foundation, Fulbright Foundation, and National Science Foundation. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016.

Gateways Event Series: Re Imagine Everything
2021-03-09 16:00 - 2021-03-10 15:59
Join us for a series of conversations on March 1, 3, and 10 designed to inform and inspire us as we fight to change our culture’s attitudes towards crime and punishment. This two week series will examine topics such as youth incarceration, transformative justice, disability justice, and prison abolition.

Everett Fellows will moderate hour-long conversation between activists, community leaders, and academics. Conversations will be followed by an optional 30 min discussion led by Fellows.

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Creating future communities: Just alternatives to incarceration

with Micah Herskind and Adnan KhanMarch 1, 4pm PSTRegister here

Transformative Justice for the People: Ways to Move from Theory to Praxis

with Anjuli Verma and Adamu ChanMarch 3, 4pm PST Register here

Ending Dysfunctional Discipline: Transformative Solutions to Stop the School to Prison Pipeline

With Zach Norris and Steven CzifraMarch 10, 4pm PST Register here

University Forum: V is For Veracity
2021-03-09 09:30 - 11:00
University Forum featuring SJRC Founding Director and Professor of Sociology Jenny Reardon with introductions and Q&A moderation by Assistant Professor of Sociology James Doucet-Battle.

Metaphors of war and battle in fighting COVID-19, now commonplace, can have their own problematic effects on how we imagine and act in the face of the pandemic. The “us vs. them” imagery that war metaphors promote pulls us away from veracity—“trustworthy truths” that foreground human (and nonhuman) relations and interdependencies. The pandemic provides an opportunity to mobilize veracity for a more just post-COVID-19 future.

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Jenny Reardon Jenny Reardon is a Professor of Sociology and the Founding Director of the Science and Justice Research Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research draws into focus questions about identity, justice and democracy that are often silently embedded in scientific ideas and practices, particularly in modern genomic research. Her training spans molecular biology, the history of biology, science studies, feminist and critical race studies, and the sociology of science, technology and medicine. She is the author of Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics (Princeton University Press, 2005) and The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, Knowledge After the Genome (Chicago University Press, Fall 2017). Recently, she started a project to bike over one thousand miles through her home state of Kansas to learn from farmers, ranchers and other denizens of the high plains about how best to know and care for the prairie.

James Doucet-Battle James Doucet-Battle is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley/University of San Francisco Joint Medical Anthropology Program where he received his Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of science, technology and society studies, development studies, and anthropological approaches to health and medicine. He applies these interests to study the political economy of genomic discourses about race, risk, and health disparities. He is the author of the book, Recruiting Sweetness: Translating Race, Risk, and Gender in Type 2 Diabetes Research and several journal articles.

Popular Culture and the Radical Imaginary
2021-03-09 08:00 - 09:30
Visualizing Abolition is pleased to present Popular Culture and the Radical Imaginary, a discussion with Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network and artist and activist Maxwell Addae. Their conversation will focus on their collaborative project researching the media portrayals of Black women and incarceration as well the real-world impact of the narratives told about crime and punishment in the United States.

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Patrisse Cullors Artist, Organizer, Educator, and Popular Public Speaker Cullors is a Los Angeles native and Co-Founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network and Founder of grassroots Los Angeles based organization Dignity and Power Now. Cullors’ work for Black Lives Matter recently received recognition in TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020 list and TIME Magazine’s 2020 ‘100 Women of the Year’. Cullors is a New York Times bestselling author of When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir (2018). She is also the Faculty Director at Arizona’s Prescott College of a new Social and Environmental Arts Practice MFA program that she has developed. Cullors is a former staff writer at Freeform’s Good Trouble series as well as an actress on the show. For the last 20 years, Cullors has been on the frontlines of criminal justice reform and led Reform LA Jails’ “Yes on R” campaign, a ballot initiative that passed by a 73% landslide victory in March 2020.

Maxwell Addae Film Director, Writer, Producer With a love of cinema’s more idiosyncratic directing auteurs, Maxwell Addae has strived to express himself as purely as possible. Most notable merging the vulnerably personal with genre flourishes. Following a small stint touring as a performance artist, which changed how he envisioned movement within film, he is now eager to utilize all of the new tools he’s acquired over the years. He has also been a semi-finalist or finalist in the following programs over the past year: Sundance Creative Producing Lab, Nicholls Fellowship, TIFF Talent Filmmaker Lab, and the Austin Screenwriting Competition. His American Film Institute thesis short and most personal work to date is called Outdooring which has screened at over 20 international festivals. Most notably the 2019 South by Southwest, Outfest, shortlisted for the Iris Prize, screened in the 2020 Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival and was acquired in a three-year deal with Revolt TV.

Back to School: What Elementary Schools Need to Consider in Re-Opening their Doors
2021-03-08 10:30
March Slugs and Steins talk with Professor Rebecca London.

As elementary schools reopen after prolonged physical closure due to COVID-19, attention to healing the school community will be essential. Although there is wide variation in the timing and formats with which schools plan to reopen, it is clear that when students reenter school buildings they will be eager to reconnect with friends and teachers. Because elementary school-aged children learn and grow through play, recess is an ideal time to support healing and to prepare students to return to the classroom ready to learn. When students are allowed to reenter school buildings, providing opportunities for play should be a priority; this talk discusses how schools can safely implement recess and harness the power of play to rebuild the school community and support the well-being of their students.

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Rebecca A. LondonAssociate Professor of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz Rebecca’s research focuses on the ways that communities, educational institutions, and community organizations support young people to be healthy and successful. She advocates for and utilizes a community-engaged research approach to co-construct research and knowledge with those who can benefit the most from the research. Her work focuses on both policy and practice, and uses qualitative and quantitative methods. She has conducted research in multiple fields, including K–12 and postsecondary education, cross-sector approaches to “whole student” development, health and wellness, afterschool programs, and social welfare programs. London is author of Rethinking Recess: Creating Safe and Healthy Playtime for All Children in School (2019) and co-editor of From Data to Action: A Community Approach to Improving Youth Outcomes (with Milbrey McLaughlin, 2013).

Art, Abolition, and the University
2021-03-02 08:00 - 09:30
Visualizing Abolition presents artist Ashley Hunt in conversation with MJ Hart, Joshua Solis, Alberto Lule, Ryan Flaco Rising, and Rodrigo Vazquez of the Underground Scholars Initiative. The Underground Scholars Initiative supports formerly incarcerated students at UC Santa Cruz and system impacted students in the transition experience and beyond. For Art, Abolition, and the University, Hunt and the Underground Scholars will talk about their collaboration of a broadsheet for the Barring Freedom exhibition, available here. They will also discuss the roles of the university in struggles for abolition and what they call the prison to school pipeline.

Underground Scholars is a statewide initiative that supports formerly incarcerated and system impacted students in the transition experience and beyond. With a focus on recruitment, retention, advocacy and policy. We aim to bridge the popular academic theoretical discourse of mass incarceration with one that is grounded in the lived experiences of UCSC students and students from surrounding communities. Together we are building the prison to school pipeline.

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Ashley Hunt Hunt uses images, objects, maps, writing and performance to engage social ideas and actions. He approaches art and activism as complimentary spheres of practice — drawing upon the ideas and aesthetics of social movements, cultural theory and art alike. Hunt has exhibited work in galleries internationally and correctional institutions, such as the 2012 Made in L.A. Biennial of the Hammer Museum, the Tate Modern in London and the Putnamville Correctional Institution in Indiana.

Missy “MJ” Hart Hart is an artist, abolitionist, and gang member turned activist after surviving the horrors of the criminal injustice system. MJ is a Workshop Facilitator and Creator of “Rozes Among Thorns” with the org The Beat Within. MJ is helping to establish the Underground Scholars Initiative at UCSC while completing their BA in Psychology with a minor in History of Consciousness. MJ strives to put their knowledge into action organizing with grassroots movements in their hometown and beyond.

Joshua Solis Solis is a first generation formerly incarcerated alumnus from UCSC. After spending over 11 years incarcerated he is now a leader and advocate for formerly incarcerated and system impacted students in California. He earned a BA in Sociology at UCSC, and is currently pursuing his Masters. Joshua is now the Program Coordinator for the Underground Scholars Initiative at UC Santa Cruz. Through comprehensive collaboration, program coordination, and outreach his efforts serve to continue the prison to school pipeline.

Alberto Lule Lule became an artist while serving a thirteen year prison sentence. Art made the prison walls disappear, allowing Alberto to overcome both a physical and mental prison. Using mixed media installation, Lule critiques mass incarceration and particularly the California prison system. Alberto connects the similarities between institutions, from institutions of higher learning to correctional institutions, to expose and learn from a scientific and sociological perspective, but even more thoroughly through art and activism.

Ryan Flaco Rising Rising has experienced drug addiction, gang banging, physical and mental abuse, incarceration as a juvenile, seven years in prison, and brutal prison riots which almost cost their life. While in prison, education became an outlet to address past trauma and writing helped Ryan grow a passion for learning. Through the Underground Scholars Initiative Ryan developed leadership skills and is engaged in finding solutions to end mass incarceration through collective first-hand experiences while thriving at UC Santa Barbara.

Latino Role Models Conference 2021 with Keynote Speaker Manuel Pastor
2021-02-27 01:30 - 05:00
Inspiring Students to Achieve their Dreams for College & Career.

Latino Role Models is a FREE conference for Santa Cruz County students from grade 6 to college and their families. LRM features Latino college students and professionals plus workshops. The conference is conducted in Spanish with English translation.

Presented by:Senderos; Cabrillo College; Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County; Consulado General de Mexico en San Jose; Greater Opportunities for Adult Learning (GOAL); Live Oak School District, Pajaro Valley Unified School District; Santa Cruz City Schools; Santa Cruz County Office of Education; Santa Cruz County College Commitment; Senderos; Soquel Union Elementary School District; UC Santa Cruz: The Humanities Institute and the Institute for Social Transformation.

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Manuel PastorKeynote Speaker Dr. Manuel Pastor is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California (USC) where he directs the USC Equity Research Institute. He is the Turpanjian Chair in Civil Society and Social Change, and holds an economics Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Pastor’s research focuses on the economic, environmental, and social conditions facing low-income urban communities – and the social movements seeking to change those realities. His latest book is titled, State of Resistance: What California’s Dizzying Descent and Remarkable Resurgence Means for America’s Future.

Alejandra María Gabriela Bologna ZubikaraiAmbassador Cónsul General de México en San José, California took office in June 2019 as Consul General of Mexico in San Jose. The Ambassador holds a B.A in International Relations from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She joined the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1985 and is a career diplomat. She served as the Consulate General of Mexico in Los Angeles (2000-2004) and as Consul General of Mexico in Sacramento (2004-2009). In 2006 she was promoted as a career Ambassador. She served in Milan, Italy (2009-2010) as Consul General of Mexico, Ambassador of Mexico in Panama (2011-2015), Special Advisor at the Undersecretary for Latin America and the Caribbean (2015), Advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs (2015-20016), Deputy Director General for Foreign Missions at the General Office for Protocol (2016-2018), and Special Advisor in the Financial Administration Unit (2018-2019).

Erandi GarcíaSpeaker Originally from Morelia, Mexico, has worked in various media outlets in Mexico and the United States, such as: TV Azteca Michoacán, Univision 67 and Telemundo 48 in the Bay Area. She has won the Emmy Award for excellence in news, among other distinctions. Erandi is the founder of a non-profit organization called Juntos Podemos whose mission is to inform and educate the Spanish-speaking population about public health and safety. She currently works for the Hospice Giving Foundation in Monterey, California. When she’s not working, Erandi likes to walk on the beach, hike, and plan the next adventure with her family.

Karen Yuslen Martinez Valencia & Claudia Valencia Rojas Speaker Karen was born in Oaxaca Mexico. She came to the United States at the age of six and has since focused on school. She attends the University of California Merced. In spring 2022 she will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics. As a first-generation college student she has had many barriers in her path, and despite her falls she still wants to make her dreams come true. Claudia, mother of Karen, was born in Oaxaca, Mexico. She grew up in a small town and out of necessity immigrated to the United States with her six-year-old daughter in hopes of a better future. That was thirteen years ago and today her daughter is twenty-one years old and will graduate from the University of California Merced with a degree in Mathematics in 2022. These past years have been very difficult. As a single mother she has held up to three jobs to survive. “I am pleased that my daughter and I, despite the difficulties that life has given us, have been able to move forward.”

Toward a political economy of public safety power shutoff: Politics, ideology, and the limits of regulatory choice in California
2021-02-26 04:00 - 05:30
Speaker: Les Guliasi, researcher in the UC Santa Cruz Sociology Department.

California utilities have chosen to shut off electricity delivery to consumers by employing a “Public Safety Power Shutoff” (PSPS) strategy when gusty winds and dry conditions heighten the risk of wild fires, which pose a major threat to life, property, and public health and safety. My study examines the public policy rationale underlying the PSPS strategy within the context of the policy framework for advancing the commercialization of microgrids as a means of mitigating the effects wildfires and PSPS events. My analysis centers on a case study of the outcome of the first phase of the California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC) microgrid rulemaking proceeding, pursuant to Senate Bill 1339. The theory of structural interests is used to explain how political and ideological conflict among key stakeholders, including developers, environmentalists and social justice advocates, and the clash between investor-owned utilities (IOUs) and community choice aggregators (CCAs) over market share, fought in the regulatory arena, reveal contrasting visions about the future of energy delivery, and expose the limitations of policy choices faced by regulators in adjudicating disputes. This case study provides some cautionary lessons for the nation’s public utility regulators to avoid “regulatory inertia” in their decision-making process, and to confront practical tradeoffs when balancing legitimate interests in serving the public good against the desire to promote long-term environmental goals.

Please email the Institute for Social Transformation at transform@ucsc.edu for the Zoom link.

UCSC NewsCenter: Sociology researcher seeks solutions for Public Safety Power Shutoffs.

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Les GuliasiLes Guliasi currently serves as President of the Power Association Board. He is a Research Associate with the University of California, Santa Cruz. Following a lengthy career as an executive at Pacific Gas & Electric Company in San Francisco, Les most recently worked with Trans Bay Cable LLC and SteelRiver Infrastructure Partners, responsible for governmental & regulatory affairs and business development. He previously worked for Reliant/RRI Energy (now NRG Energy), and served as a senior consultant with Booz|Allen|Hamilton focusing on developing renewable energy projects on military installations. Les has worked with government agencies, independent energy producers, transmission owners, and various business enterprises in the energy sector on resource and strategic planning, business and renewable energy project development, generation and transmission project permitting and development, and governmental and regulatory affairs. Les received his BA degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, and earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is currently a fellow at the National Regulatory Research Institute (NRRI), an affiliate of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC).

Abolitionist Feminisms w/ Beth Ritchie, Erica Meiners, and Sonya Clark
2021-02-23 08:00 - 09:30
Beth Richie, University of Illinois, Chicago, Erica Meiners, Northeastern Illinois University, and Soyna Clark, Amherst College, Western Massachusetts, join us for a conversation on feminist―queer, anti-capitalist, grassroots, and women of color— organizing and abolition for the next Visualizing Abolition event.

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Beth RichieThe Head of Department of Criminology, Law and Justice; Professor of African American Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies and the University of Illinois and Chicago. The emphasis of Beth Richie’s scholarly and activist work has been on the ways that race/ethnicity and social position affect women’s experience of violence and incarceration, focusing on the experiences of African American battered women and sexual assault survivors. Beth is the author of ​Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence and America’s Prison Nation (NYU Press, 2012) which chronicles the evolution of the contemporary anti-violence movement during the time of mass incarceration in the United States.

Erica R. MeinersWriter, Educator and Organizer Current work includes a co-edited anthology The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences, Working Towards Freedom (Haymarket Press 2018) and For the Children? Protecting Innocence in a Carceral State (University of Minnesota 2016). A Distinguished Visiting Scholar at a range of universities and centers – including University of Pittsburgh, Trent University, CUNY Graduate Center, the Simone de Beauvoir Institute, and Chicago’s Leather Archives and Museum, her work has been supported by the Illinois Humanities Council, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and a Soros Justice Fellowship. The Bernard J. Brommel Distinguished Research Professor at Northeastern Illinois University, Erica is a member of her labor union, University Professionals of Illinois, and she teaches classes in justice studies, education, and gender and sexuality studies. Most importantly, Erica has collaboratively started and works alongside a range of ongoing mobilizations for liberation, particularly movements that involve access to free public education for all, including people during and after incarceration, and other queer abolitionist struggles. A member of Critical Resistance, the Illinois Death in Custody Project, the Prison Neighborhood Arts / Education Project, and the Education for Liberation Network, she is a sci-fi fan, an avid runner, and a lover of bees and cats.

Sonya Clark Clark’s work draws from the legacy of crafted objects and the embodiment of skill. As an African American artist, craft is a means to honor her lineage and expand notions of both American-ness and art. She uses materials as wide ranging as textiles, hair, beads, combs, and sound to address issues of nationhood, identity, and racial constructs. Clark is a full professor in the Department of Art and the History of Art at Amherst College in Western Massachusetts. Clark’s work is exhibited in museums and galleries internationally, and she is the recipient of several awards including an Anonymous Was a Woman Award, and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship.

37th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Convocation with Mariame Kaba
2021-02-12 09:30
Please join us for the 37th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Convocation featuring activist and organizer Mariame Kaba in conversation with Gina Dent, associate professor of feminist studies. Mariame Kaba is an organizer, educator, curator, and prison industrial complex (PIC) abolitionist who is active in movements for racial, gender, and transformative justice. Kaba is the founder and director of Project NIA, a grassroots abolitionist organization with a vision to end youth incarceration. The annual convocation celebrates the life and dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by presenting speakers who discuss the civil rights issues of equality, freedom, justice, and opportunity. The convocation also seeks to build partnerships and develop dialogue within the campus community and with the local communities served by the university.

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Free and open to the public Date: 5:30 p.m., Friday, February 12, 2021Location: VirtualQuestions? Please contact the Special Events Office at specialevents@ucsc.edu or (831) 459-5003.

Mariame Kaba Organizer, educator, curator, and prison industrial complex abolitionist who is active in movements for racial, gender, and transformative justice. The founder and director of Project NIA, a grassroots abolitionist organization with a vision to end youth incarceration, she is currently a researcher at Interrupting Criminalization: Research in Action at the Barnard Center for Research on Women, a project she cofounded with police misconduct attorney and organizer Andrea Ritchie in 2018. She has cofounded multiple other organizations and projects over the years including We Charge Genocide, the Chicago Freedom School, the Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls and Young Women, Love & Protect, the Just Practice Collaborative, and Survived & Punished. She is a member of the Movement for Black Lives Policy Table. Kaba’s leadership, organizing, and influence extend widely as she offers a radical analysis that influences how people think and respond to how violence, prisons, and policing affect the lives of people of color. Kaba is the author of Missing Daddy, and her forthcoming book, We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice, will be published this month.

UCSC Civic Innovation Forum: Housing and Homelessness
2021-02-11 11:00
What are the most effective current approaches to helping people experiencing homelessness? What technological innovations are having an impact? Join us and gain a deeper understanding of this pervasive challenge and spark your creativity to consider new innovative approaches to solutions.

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Changing Climate: The Role of Environmental Justice
2021-02-10 17:30 - 19:00
A Conversation with Rhiana Gunn-Wright

Please join us on February 10th as we discuss meaningful climate policy and environmental justice reform. In this conversation, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Director of Climate Policy at the Roosevelt Institute and an architect of the Green New Deal, will speak to:

Why climate policy must include environmental justiceWhy climate must be part of our post-COVID economic recoveryOpportunities for the Biden administration to tackle climate change and environmental justice

Moderated by Sikina Jinnah, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at UC Santa Cruz.

Welcome and opening remarks by Valentin Lopez, Chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band.

Event sponsored by the Institute for Social Transformation. If you have disability-related needs, please contact the institute at transform@ucsc.edu. The event will include closed captioning.

UCSC News Center: Green New Deal architect Rhiana Gunn-Wright will make a virtual campus visit >>

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Rhiana Gunn-Wright is the Director of Climate Policy at the Roosevelt Institute. Before joining Roosevelt, Gunn-Wright was the policy director for New Consensus, charged with developing and promoting the Green New Deal, among other projects. Previously she served as the policy director for Abdul El-Sayed’s 2018 Michigan gubernatorial campaign. A 2013 Rhodes Scholar, Gunn-Wright has also worked as the policy analyst for the Detroit Health Department, was a Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellow of Women and Public Policy at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, and served on the policy team for former First Lady Michelle Obama. She graduated magna cum laude from Yale in 2011 with majors in African American studies and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. Recent Publications: A Green Recovery: The Case for Climate-Forward Stimulus Policies in America’s COVID-19 Recession Response Winning the Green New Deal: Why We Must, How We Can (available now at Bookshop Santa Cruz) Bloomberg Quicktake Video: Rhiana Gunn-Wright Is Fighting the Policies Making People Sick

Dr. Sikina Jinnah is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at University of California at Santa Cruz, and a 2017 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. She holds a PhD from UC Berkeley in Environmental Science, Policy and Management. Her research focuses on global environmental governance, in particular in the areas of climate change, climate engineering, and the nexus between international trade and environmental politics. Her 2014 book (“Post-treaty Politics“) received the 2016 Harold and Margaret Sprout Award for best book in international environmental affairs from the International Studies Association. Her 2020 monograph “Greening through Trade” explores how US trade policy has impacted environmental policy abroad. Jinnah edits the journal Environmental Politics, is on the editorial board for the journal Global Environmental Politics, is a Senior Research Fellow with the Earth System Governance project, and sits on the board of the Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment. You can learn more about Dr. Jinnah’s work at: www.sikinajinnah.com.

Valentin Lopez is the Chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, one of three historic tribes that are recognized as Ohlone. He is Mutsun, Awaswas, Chumash and Yokuts. Valentin is a Native American Advisor to the University of California, Office of the President on issues related to repatriation. He is also a Native American Advisor to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology. Valentin is actively involved in efforts to restore tribal indigenous knowledge and ensure our history is accurately told. Finally, Valentin is working to restore the Mutsun Language and is a traditional Mutsun singer and dancer.

Material and Memory with Sanford Biggers and Leigh Raiford
2021-02-09 08:00 - 09:30
Sanford Biggers is a Harlem-based artist whose work speaks to current social, political and economic happenings. For this Visualizing Abolition event, Biggers will be joined by visual culture theorist Leigh Raiford for a conversation about art, materiality, violence, and possibility.

Visualizing Abolition is a series of online events organized by Professor Gina Dent, Feminist Studies and Dr. Rachel Nelson, Director, Institute of the Arts and Sciences. The events feature artists, activists, and scholars united by their commitment to the vital struggle for prison abolition. Originally, Visualizing Abolition was being planned as an in-person symposium. Due to the ongoing pandemic, the panels, artist talks, film screenings, and other events will instead take place online. The events accompany Barring Freedom, an exhibition of contemporary art on view at San José Museum of Art October 30, 2020-June, 2021. To accompany the exhibition, Solitary Garden, a public art project about mass incarceration and solitary confinement is on view at UC Santa Cruz.

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Sanford Biggers Biggers’ work is an interplay of narrative, perspective and history that speaks to current social, political and economic happenings and the contexts that bore them. His diverse practice positions him as a collaborator with the past through explorations of often overlooked cultural and political narratives from American history. Biggers’ has exhibited work in galleries including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Tate Modern, London, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Leigh Raiford An Associate Professor of African American Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, where she teaches and researches about race, gender, justice and visuality. She also serves as affiliate faculty in the Program in American Studies, and the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies. Raiford received her PhD from Yale University’s joint program in African American Studies and American Studies in 2003.

Navigating Stress, Anxiety, and Isolation in the midst of a Pandemic
2021-02-04 09:30 - 11:00
As we approach 12 months of living with a global pandemic, the stress, anxiety, and for some, the isolation is taking its toll. Join Psychology Professor Craig Haney and UC Santa Cruz alumna Dr. Alison Holman for an important discussion about early psychological responses, loneliness, isolation, and how the distortion of time may be affecting our well-being as we negotiate a balance between the risks and human needs of social connection.

This University Forum event is co-sponsored by the Institute for Social Transformation.

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Craig Haney An American social psychologist and professor of psychology at UC Santa Cruz, noted for his work on the study of capital punishment and the psychological impact of imprisonment and prison isolation. He has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, a master’s and Ph.D. in psychology and a J.D. in law from Stanford University. Haney’s research concerns the application of social psychological principles and data to various legal and civil rights issues. He has specialized in the assessment of institutional environments as well as study of social histories of persons accused or convicted of serious violent crimes, and has worked on the way that attitudes and beliefs about crime and punishment are changed by legal procedures, as well as the role such attitudes and beliefs play in influencing legal fairness and impartiality.

Alison Holman(Rachel Carson ’89) A professor for the Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing, a family nurse practitioner, and researcher at UC Irvine. Holman earned two bachelor’s degrees; one in nursing science from San Francisco State University and the other in psychology at UC Santa Cruz. She has a Ph.D. in health psychology from UC Irvine and a family nurse practitioner certification from the California Board of Registered Nursing. Her research focuses on understanding the early post-event predictors of comorbid trauma-related mental and physical health problems. She seeks to identify predictors of, contributions of, and interactions between acute responses to trauma that increase vulnerability to trauma-related health problems. The ultimate goal of her research is to identify targets for early interventions to prevent trauma-related morbidity and mortality.

Surveillance and Cinematics w/ American Artist, Simone Browne and Ruha Benjamin
2021-02-02 08:00 - 09:30
Join us for the next conversation for Visualizing Abolition focusing on technology, surveillance, and contemporary art with American Artist, Ruha Benjamin, and Simone Browne. American Artist is a contemporary artist working in video, installation, new media, and writing to consider how structures of racism and labor intersect with networked life and digital systems. Ruha Benjamin is Associate Professor, African American Studies, Princeton University and founding director of the IDA B. WELLS Just Data Lab. She researches the intersections of race, justice and technology. Simone Browne is Associate Professor, African and African Diaspora Studies , University of Texas at Austin, and Research Director of Critical Surveillance Inquiry (CSI). Browne researches the social and ethical implications of surveillance technologies.

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American Artist American Artist (b. 1989 Altadena, CA, lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) is an artist whose work considers black labor and visibility within networked life. Their practice makes use of video, installation, new media, and writing. Artist is a resident at Red Bull Arts Detroit and a 2018-2019 recipient of the Queens Museum Jerome Foundation Fellowship. They are a former resident of EYEBEAM and completed the Whitney Independent Study program as an artist in 2017. They have exhibited at the Museum of African Diaspora, San Francisco; the Studio Museum in Harlem; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and Koenig & Clinton, New York. Their work has been featured in the New York Times, Artforum, and Huffington Post. They have published writing in The New Inquiry and Art21. Artist is a part-time faculty at Parsons The New School and teaches at the School for Poetic Computation.

Simone Browne Browne is Associate Professor in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her first book, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, was awarded the 2016 Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize by the American Studies Association, the 2016 Surveillance Studies Book Prize by the Surveillance Studies Network, and the 2015 Donald McGannon Award for Social and Ethical Relevance in Communications Technology Research. Simone is also a member of Deep Lab, a feminist collaborative composed of artists, engineers, hackers, writers, and theorists.

Ruha Benjamin Benjamin is Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, Founding Director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, and author of the award-winning book Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (2019), among numerous other publications. Benjamin writes, teaches, and speaks widely about the relationship between knowledge and power, race and citizenship, health and justice.

CAFIN and UC Investments Speaker Series: Financial Risks, Innovation and Inclusion in a Post-COVID World
2021-01-29 01:00
Exiting the Great Recession and entering the Pandemic Recession, we study the high-frequency real-activity signals provided by a leading nowcast, the ADS Index of Business Conditions produced and released in real time by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. We track the evolution of real-time vintage beliefs and compare them to a later-vintage chronology. Entering the Pandemic Recession, real-time ADS plunges and then swings as its underlying economic indicators swing, but the ADS paths quickly converge to indicate a return to brisk positive growth by mid-May. We show, moreover, that the daily real activity path was extremely highly correlated with the daily COVID-19 path.

The economic crisis associated with COVID-19 pandemic has altered all aspects of our lives. In a new CAFIN speaker series, we will focus on financial challenges and developments. Among the questions that are relevant are: What are the risks to the global financial system in the medium to long run? Is the banking system robust enough? What kinds of future policy interventions might be necessary? What changes to payment systems and other financial innovations have been accelerated by the crisis? How do contagion control policies affect populations that are traditionally underserved by the financial sector? Will financial inclusion be more difficult to achieve after the pandemic?

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“Coded Bias” Documentary Film Screening and Panel Discussion
2021-01-28 09:30
FREE virtual screening and panel discussion of the award winning documentary film Coded Bias, which explores how machine-learning algorithms can perpetuate society’s existing class-, race-, and gender-based inequities.

While working on an assignment involving facial-recognition software, the M.I.T. Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini found that the algorithm couldn’t detect her face — until she put on a white mask. As she recounts in the documentary “Coded Bias,” Buolamwini soon discovered that most such artificial-intelligence programs are trained to identify patterns based on data sets that skew light-skinned and male. “When you think of A.I., it’s forward-looking,” she says. “But A.I. is based on data, and data is a reflection of our history.” “Coded Bias” tackles its sprawling subject by zeroing in empathetically on the human costs.

“Coded Bias” examines algorithmic bias as a modern civil rights issue, and sheds light on privacy and equity issues related to increasing reliance on artificial intelligence.

Watch the trailer >>

Panelists Bios:

Professor Neda Atanasoski of the Humanities Institute Center for Racial Justice

Professor A.M. Darke of Digital Arts and New Media (DANM)

Professor Jody Greene of Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning (CITL)

Sponsored by: UCSC’s Privacy Office in collaboration with Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ODEI), and sponsored by Digital Arts and New Media (DANM), Humanities Institute, Center for Racial Justice, Institute for Social Transformation, Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute (CITRIS), Baskin Engineering, Data Science Research Center, Center for Innovations in teaching and learning (CITL), and the office of Campus Counsel.

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Prisons and Poetics with Reginald Dwayne Betts and Craig Haney
2021-01-26 08:00 - 09:30
The Institute of the Arts and Sciences and The Humanities Institute are pleased to present a poetry reading and conversation with award-winning American poet Reginald Dwayne Betts and renowned social psychologist Craig Haney, moderated by Professor Gina Dent. The event is part of the IAS Visualizing Abolition Series and The Humanities Institute’s yearlong series on Memory.

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Reginald Dwayne Betts An American poet, memoirist, and teacher. His work in public defense, his years of advocacy, and Betts’s own experiences as a teenager in maximum security prisons uniquely positions him to speak to the failures of the current criminal justice system and present encouraging ideas for change. Between his work in public defense, his years of advocacy, and Betts’s own experiences as a teenager in maximum security prisons uniquely position him to speak to the failures of the current criminal justice system and present encouraging ideas for change.

Craig Haney A Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, noted for his work on the study of capital punishment and the psychological impact of imprisonment and prison isolation. Haney has published four books and well over a hundred research and law review articles about the harmful psychological effects of incarceration and advocating for fundamental criminal justice reforms. Haney’s research and testimony has been cited in a number of landmark legal cases that changed individual prisons, prison systems, and correctional practices. For example, his testimony about the harmful effects of prison overcrowding in California was central in the United States Supreme Court’s Brown v. Plata (2011) ruling that reduced the state’s prison population by 40,000 persons.

Generations Together: Learning from young activists and adult allies
2021-01-23 01:00 - 02:30
A global conversation with young activists from Bolivia, Senegal, Togo, and the United States about intergenerational collaboration and how adults can most effectively support youth activism. Bridging diverse contexts and struggles, including climate justice, working children’s rights, and young people’s participation in the design and implementation of public policy, this webinar will explore different approaches to allyship and the challenges and potential for adults and young people to work together in pursuit of a more just and sustainable world.

90 minute webinar on Saturday, January 23rd at 5pm GMT, noon EST, 9am PST

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Featuring:

Youth vs. Apocalypse — a Bay-Area based diverse network of young climate justice activists working together to lift the voices of youth, in particular youth of color, and fight for a livable climate and an equitable, sustainable, and just world.

Act2gether Bolivia — a social movement promoting partnership between children and adults across sectors in order to create a fair and sustainable world.

The African Movement of Working Children and Youth — a child-led organization that trains victims to become actors for their own protection, influencing their communities for children to be born and grow in good conditions, to enjoy their full rights to thrive, while helping their communities to develop harmoniously in peace and in a favorable environment.

In partnership with: Univ. of Sussex, Children and Work, Save the Children, Proteknon, Learning For Well-Being Foundation, and the Institute for Social Transformation.

For more info contact: Jessica Taft, Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz at jtaft@ucsc.edu

Socio-ecological Trade-offs in Urban Garden Management and Ecosystem Services
2021-01-22 04:00 - 05:30
Ecosystem services, such as pollination, pest control, climate regulation, and food production are essential for human well-being, especially in urban areas where ~ 60% of the world’s population will live by 2030. While local and landscape-level habitat management practices are assumed to drive biodiversity and ecosystem services within urban areas, few have quantified the relationships between ecosystem services or whether habitat management plays a mechanistic role in mediating trade-offs or synergies among ecosystem services. Moreover, garden ecosystems are uniquely shaped by the people who grow them. Urban community gardens bring together multiple gardeners with different preferences for managing their individual plots. These preferences are informed by a host of social processes, including previous gardening experiences, cultural background, education, and income level. While agroecological principles generally recommend building food systems that integrate biodiversity, urban gardeners ultimately determine garden design. Stacy Philpott (ENVS, CASFS) and Azucena Lucatero (ENVS) will present two areas of their research related to gardeners, garden and landscape management and ecosystem services. First, they will present results from 5 years of data across 28 urban gardens in the California central coast that investigate the role of habitat management (at the garden and landscape scale) as a mechanism driving biodiversity, ecosystem services, and trade-offs and synergies among ecosystem services. Second, they’ll discuss ongoing work aimed at understanding the social dimensions of garden management that may help us better contend with trade-offs in benefits to gardeners and benefits to biodiversity.

Stacy Philpott and Azucena Lucatero will be sharing some of their work on: “Socio-ecological trade-offs in urban garden management and ecosystem services” at the next Urban Environment & Justice Collaborative meeting.

Please email the Institute for Social Transformation at transform@ucsc.edu for the Zoom link.

More info

Stacy PhilpottProfessor of Environmental Studies at UC Santa Cruz. Studies agroecology and insect biology.

Azucena LucateroPhD candidate, Environmental Studies at UC Santa Cruz. Studies insect ecology, habitat complexity, meta-communities and social justice.

Prisons, Histories and Erasures with Joanne Barker, Maria Gaspar, and Kelly Lytle Hernández
2021-01-19 08:00 - 09:30
For the next Visualizing Abolition event, Joanne Barker, Maria Gaspar, and Kelly Lytle Hernández join us to discuss the histories and present struggles that disappear within the labyrinthian network of prisons, jails, and detention centers in the United States. Together, these influential artist and historians will talk about what is made visible when the settler colonial politics that sustain the prison industrial complex come into focus.

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CAFIN and UC Investments Speaker Series: Violence and Economic Activity: Evidence from African American Inventors, 1870-1940
2021-01-15 01:00
Speaker: Lisa Cook, Professor of Economics and International Relations, Michigan State University.

Recent studies have examined the effect of political conflict and domestic terrorism on economic and political outcomes. This talk focuses on Dr. Cook’s paper using the rise in mass violence between 1870 and 1940 as a natural experiment for determining the impact of ethnic and political violence on economic activity, namely patenting. She finds that violent acts account for more than 1100 missing patents compared to 726 actual patents among African American inventors over this period. Valuable patents decline in response to major riots and segregation laws. Absence of the rule of law covaries with declines in patent productivity for white and black inventors, but this decline is significant only for African American inventors. Patenting responds positively to declines in violence. These findings imply that ethnic and political conflict may affect the level, direction, and quality of invention and economic growth over time.

The economic crisis associated with COVID-19 pandemic has altered all aspects of our lives. In a new CAFIN speaker series, we will focus on financial challenges and developments. Among the questions that are relevant are: What are the risks to the global financial system in the medium to long run? Is the banking system robust enough? What kinds of future policy interventions might be necessary? What changes to payment systems and other financial innovations have been accelerated by the crisis? How do contagion control policies affect populations that are traditionally underserved by the financial sector? Will financial inclusion be more difficult to achieve after the pandemic?

Moderated by: Galina Hale, Professor of Economics at UC Santa Cruz.

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Dr. Lisa D. CookSpeaker Cook is a Professor in the Department of Economics and at James Madison College at Michigan State University. As a Marshall Scholar, she received a second B.A. from Oxford University in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. Dr. Cook earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. Among her current research interests are economic growth and development, financial institutions and markets, innovation, and economic history. As a Senior Economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers during the 2011-2012 academic year, Dr. Cook worked on the euro zone, financial instruments, innovation, and entrepreneurship. She is currently Director of the American Economic Association Summer Training Program.

An Evening with Jennifer Brea and Megan Moodie – Talking about Chronic Illness, Care, and COVID
2021-01-14 09:00 - 11:00
Join Academy-Award Nominated Filmmaker Jennifer Brea and anthropologist and writer Megan Moodie for an evening of conversation and reflection on chronic illness, the global crisis of care, and Covid-19.

As the numbers of the chronically ill grow rapidly worldwide due to what is being called “long Covid,” there is much to be learned from the experience of those who were grappling with the effects of difficult-to-diagnose, understudied, and invisibilzed diseases long before the appearance of the novel coronavirus. What do the experiences of the chronically ill teach us about how to survive – not just physically, but emotionally and socially – in the face of huge knowledge gaps and medical disbelief? How can patients separated by vast distances and often unable to engage in traditional political organizing join together to demand answers and treatment? What do patient voices tell us about how the organization of medicine needs to change in order to better serve the well-being of us all?

Registrants will receive a link to pre-screen Brea’s 2017 film “Unrest” at no cost (the film is also available to view on Netflix and Amazon Prime), as well as be invited to pre-submit questions to these two medical justice advocates. Audience members will also be invited to submit questions and participate in the discussion in real time during the event.

Presented by the Humanities Institute’s Body, (Anti)Narrative, and Corporeal Creative Practices Research Cluster and the Institute for Social Transformation.

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Jennifer Brea is an independent documentary filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She has an AB from Princeton University and was a PhD student at Harvard until sudden illness left her bedridden. In the aftermath, she rediscovered her first love, film. Her Sundance award-winning feature documentary, “Unrest,” has screened in over 30 countries and had its US national broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens. She is also co-creator of Unrest VR, winner of the Sheffield Doc/Fest Alternate Realities Award. An activist for people with disabilities and chronic illness, she co-founded a global advocacy network, #MEAction and is a TED Fellow.

Megan Moodie is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she teaches about feminist theory, disability studies, and creative ethnography. A writer of essay, fiction, film criticism, and drama, Moodie’s work has appeared in publications such as The Los Angeles Review of Books, Film Quarterly, and the Chicago Quarterly Review. Megan regularly communicates with broad audiences in and beyond anthropology; her writing on topics such as disability, genetic illness, motherhood, film, art, and daily strategies for survival has appeared in MUTHA Magazine, Film Quarterly, SAPIENS, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among others, and her 2018 essay “Birthright” (Chicago Quarterly Review (26)) was named a “Notable Essay of the Year” by Best American Essays 2019.

Suddenly Distant and Still in Flux: The Implications of COVID-19 for K12 Teachers’ Work and Schooling
2021-01-13 09:30
The UC Santa Cruz University Forum presents The Implications of COVID-19 for Teachers’ Work and K-12 Schooling with Professor Lora Bartlett and the Suddenly Distant Research Project Team. The COVID 19 pandemic forced the entire teacher workforce into distance teaching essentially overnight. ough a short-term crisis, the longevity of this pandemic is changing the context of teachers’ work in ways that are affecting the very nature of teachers’ work and the structure of K-12 schooling.

In this Forum the Suddenly Distant Research Project Team draws on in-depth interviews with 75 teachers in nine states to explore the ways that state and local responses to the pandemic have reshaped schooling and teachers’ working lives, affected teachers’ work/family lives, and exacerbated as well as abated long standing educational equity issues. Professor Lora Bartlett and research team members discuss the patterns that have emerged, the implications for the teaching profession and K-12 schooling, and insights into teachers’ feelings about how schools can best navigate this crisis.

This University Forum event is co-sponsored by the Institute for Social Transformation.

Featuring:

Lora Bartlett, Associate Professor of Education at UC Santa CruzRiley Collins, Ph.D. student in the Education Department at UC Santa CruzDr. Lina Darwich, Assistant Professor of Education in the Department of Teacher Education at Lewis and Clark Graduate School of Education and CounselingJulia E. Koppich, President of J. Koppich & Associates, a San Francisco-based education-consulting firmDr. Alisun Thompson (Cowell, 2014), Assistant Professor of Education in the Department of Teacher Education at Lewis and Clark Graduate School of Education and CounselingDr. Judith Warren Little, Professor Emeritus of Education from UC Berkeley, Carol Liu Professor of Education Policy emerita, and Dean of the Graduate School of Education emerita

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Better World Book Party
2020-12-09 08:00 - 09:00
Please join us for the 2nd annual Better World Book Party. We will honor authors from the division of Social Sciences who published in 2020:

Lily Pearl Balloffet, Latin American and Latino Studies: Argentina in the Global Middle EastJeffrey Erbig, Latin American and Latino Studies: Where Caciques and Mapmakers Met: Border Making in Eighteenth-Century South AmericaMadeleine Fairbairn, Environmental Studies: Fields of Gold: Financing the Global Land RushHiroshi Fukurai, Legal Studies and Sociology: The Introduction of Civil Jury Trials Will Transform Japan: Lessons from Experiences of Civil Jury Trials in OkinawaDavid Gordon, Politics: Cities on the World Stage Karen Holl, Environmental Studies: Primer of Ecological RestorationSikina Jinnah, Environmental Studies: Greening through Trade: How American Trade Policy is Linked to Environmental Protection Abroad and Global Environmental Politics: Understanding the Governance of the EarthAnne Kapuscinski, Environmental Studies & Coastal Science and Policy Program: Strengthening Sustainability Programs and Curricula in Higher EducationCatherine S. Ramírez, Latin American and Latino Studies: Assimilation: An Alternative History

View event slides >>

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Immigration policies in the United States: Understanding violence nation-wide and in Santa Cruz
2020-12-07 09:30
Deportation is far more than a policy term; it is a threat and an act with explosive impact on families and communities. Four in five face persecution – including torture, rape, and murder – in their home countries. Nearly 6 million children are in the care of individuals vulnerable to deportation. Family separation has immediate and long-lasting psychosocial and economic consequences for those deportand and for those left behind. Many under threat have been in this country for decades. Yet, in the face of fear and increasingly harsh policies, communities have organized to respond and build resilience. UC Santa Cruz Professor of Psychology, Regina Day Langhout, lead author on a policy brief, “Statement on the Effects of Deportation and Forced Separation on Immigrants, their Families, and Communities,” will discuss the far-reaching impacts of deportation and collective resistance. Join us for this important conversation. This University Forum event is co-sponsored by the Institute for Social Transformation.

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Regina Langhout is a Professor in the Psychology Department at UC Santa Cruz. Her research examines empowerment in schools, neighborhoods, and the workplace. As a critical social-community psychologist, she is best known for her youth participatory action research with 9-12 year old Latinx children. Indeed, she has been asked to speak about or has given workshops on yPAR with 8-12 year olds across the Americas.Most recently, her yPAR work has focused onstate-led violence against immigrant communities. She is a fellow of the Society for Community Research and Action and an associate editor of the American Journal of Community Psychology.

Juan Manuel Pedroza is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at UCSC where he studies the changing landscape of immigration in the United States. Over the past decade, he has examined the vast inequalities of immigrants’ access to justice, the social safety net, and poverty. His research examines how and where deportation and enforcement initiatives exacerbate these inequalities and leave imprints in our local communities.Pedroza has a Bachelor’s degree in History and Conflict Studies from DePauw University, a Master’s of Public Admin degree in Policy Analysis and Economic Development from Indiana University at Bloomington-SPEA, a Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University, and was a Fellow at Stanford’s Center for Poverty and Inequality and Graduate Research Fellow at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.

LGBTQ Resistance in Brazil: From the Military Dictatorship to the Current Reactionary Wave
2020-12-04 05:00
As Brazil faces the deepest political crisis of its recent history, marked by the election of a neo-fascist president and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed over 150,000 Brazilians, two webinars in Fall 2020 will bring together scholars and activists engaged in researching and resisting this complex political scenario: “Domestic Workers’ Resistance and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Brazil” on November 6 at 11 am, and “LGBTQ Resistance in Brazil: From the Military Dictatorship to the Current Reactionary Wave” on December 4 at 1 pm. This is a bilingual event (English-Portugese). Simultaneous translation will be provided.

Speakers:

Lívia Perez, PhD candidate at the University of Sao Paulo, filmmaker, and director of Lampião da Esquina (2016) and Who Killed Eloa? (2015).

Camila Marins, Afro-Brazilian queer activist, journalist, and founder of the lesbian publication Revista Brejeiras.

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2020 Right Livelihood Award Ceremony
2020-12-03 01:00 - 02:00
Join us for the live-stream of the 2020 Right Livelihood Award Ceremony followed by a brief conversation amongst RLC Santa Cruz students and faculty, and friends of the RLC. The event includes moving artistic performances, speeches from the 2020 laureates, and guest appearances from previous laureates. More details to be announced.

The 2020 Right Livelihood Laureates are:

Civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson “for his inspiring endeavor to reform the US criminal justice system and advance racial reconciliation in the face of historic trauma.”Imprisoned human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh “for her fearless activism, at great personal risk, to promote political freedoms and human rights in Iran.”Indigenous rights and environmental activist Lottie Cunningham Wren of Nicaragua “for her ceaseless dedication to the protection of indigenous lands and communities from exploitation and plunder.”Human rights activist Ales Bialiatski and the non-governmental organization Human Rights Centre “Viasna” “for their resolute struggle for the realization of democracy and human rights in Belarus.”

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