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Wide shot of 16 LPPI staff, faculty and fellows of LPPI on campus

UCLA ‘initiative’ formally becomes Latino Policy and Politics Institute

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Wide shot of 16 LPPI staff, faculty and fellows of LPPI on campus

Latino Policy and Politics Institute founding executive director Sonja Diaz, center,
with institute staff and policy fellows. | James Michael Juarez

Alise Brillault | 

The former UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative has officially become the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute, thanks to $3 million in ongoing annual funding from the state of California.

The funding, championed by the California Latino Legislative Caucus, was initially secured in 2021, with the most recent allocation coming in the budget passed by the state Legislature June 14. The support has allowed the institute, known as LPPI, to grow from a start-up initiative to a permanent research fixture at UCLA with a robust fellowship program and a consortium of nearly 50 faculty experts across UCLA’s College and professional schools.

Founded in 2017 by civil rights attorney Sonja Diaz and UCLA professor and polling expert Matt Barreto through a partnership between UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs and division of social sciences, LPPI was launched to address the most critical domestic policy challenges facing Latinos and other communities of color. Since its inception, the institute has utilized the power of research, advocacy, mobilization and leadership development to propel policy reforms that expand genuine opportunity for all Americans.

“As chair of the Latino Legislative Caucus, I am so grateful for the Latino-centric research from LPPI that has helped us formulate the policies our communities need most,” said state Sen. María Elena Durazo. “Latinos play an essential role in California, yet we are disproportionately impacted by issues like the gender pay gap and disparate health outcomes. It is critical that we have a Latino-focused think tank with readily available data on the various topics that Latinos care about most.”

With LPPI as a leading national Latino policy institute, UCLA continues to make critical strides towards its goal of achieving federal designation as a Hispanic-Serving Institution by 2025.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. 

A scan from 1610's "Certaine errors in navigation, detected and corrected"

UCLA’s Clark Library receives centuries-old rare books from longtime donor

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A scan from 1610's "Certaine errors in navigation, detected and corrected"

A scan from “Certaine errors in navigation, detected and corrected” by Edward Wright (1558?–1615), a new addition to the Paul Chrzanowski Collection. | UCLA’s William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

Margaret MacDonald | 

A new donation of 40 historical texts from Paul Chrzanowski further bolsters an already remarkable collection of early English texts at UCLA’s William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.

The newly added items — including a 17th-century parchment with the seal of Queen Elizabeth I and a handwritten manuscript describing precious metals and gems — have been prepared for use by scholars as part of the library’s Paul Chrzanowski Collection.

“This donation reflects the broader interests and learning needs of English readers at the time,” Chrzanowski said.

A scan from “Certaine errors in navigation, detected and corrected” by Edward Wright (1558?–1615), an addition to the Paul Chrzanowski Collection at UCLA’s William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.

A scan of the cover of “Certaine errors in navigation.” | UCLA’s William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

A physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, Chrzanowski began donating rare books from his collection to the Clark Library in 2009; he made additional donations in 2014 and 2018.

As a collector, his main focus is texts that Shakespeare likely read or could have read. Some of the donated items have been identified as source material Shakespeare used to write his plays; others are equally important due to their role in the development of English language, literature and history, including the earliest book in the collection, 1479’s “Cordiale quattuor novissimorum,” printed by William Caxton and one of only 12 known copies.

“The Chrzanowski Collection contains a remarkable diversity of material that supports a broad range of research topics, from animal care to politics in early modern England,” said Anna Chen, the Clark Library’s head librarian. “The quality and depth of the collection make the materials invaluable for teaching and research. The collection is consulted by a wide range of users, including high school students and research fellows, and we are thrilled by the uses that this new trove of material will make possible.”

Chrzanowski’s most recent gift includes the only known surviving printed copy of “Soliloquies” by 17th-century author Edward Topsell, joining a handwritten manuscript copy of the work already held by the Clark; and 1610’s “Certain Errors in Navigation” by Edward Wright, an important early modern contribution to the field that includes one of the first maps of Virginia.

“Paul Chrzanowski’s generous gift, which builds on his already phenomenal collection, further elevates the Clark’s role as a steward of rare, historical print works for the benefit of future generations of scholars and members of the public alike,” said Bronwen Wilson, director of the UCLA Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies and of the Clark Library. “This is truly an exciting moment.”

Image of Plates from “La clef des champs with additional woodcuts of insects, reptiles, and amphibians,” from approximately 1586 by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues (1533?–1588).

Plates from “La clef des champs with additional woodcuts of insects, reptiles, and amphibians,” from approximately 1586 by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues (1533?–1588). | UCLA’s William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

The new donation, appraised at a value of more than $600,000, brings the total value of Chrzanowski’s in-kind donations to more than $2.9 million. But its value as a scholarly resource is immeasurable; it would be nearly impossible to build a comparable Shakespearean library today.

“We are grateful for Paul Chrzanowski’s additional donation of so many wonderful and rare books,” said David Schaberg, senior dean of the UCLA College and dean of humanities. “Thanks to his generosity, the Clark has become an even more impressive resource for scholars of 17th- and 18th-century studies.”

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more of Our Stories at the College, click here.

iStock.com/Antonio Guillem

Well, I see it differently!

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UCLA psychologist Matthew Lieberman explains why people don’t view the world the same way others do
Image of Two women speaking to each other outdoors

UCLA professor Matthew Lieberman says a phenomenon called naive realism may be the single most underappreciated source of conflict and distrust across individuals and groups. iStock.com/Antonio Guillem

Stuart Wolpert | 

Why are we so sure that the way we see people, situations and politics is accurate, and the way other people see them is foolishly wrong?

The answer, according to new research by UCLA psychology professor Matthew Lieberman, lies in a region of the brain he calls the “gestalt cortex,” which helps people make sense of information that is ambiguous or incomplete — and dismiss alternative interpretations.

The research, based on an analysis of more than 400 previous studies, is published in the journal Psychological Review.

People often mistake their own understanding of people and events as objective truth, rather than as merely their own interpretation. That phenomenon, called “naive realism,” leads people to believe that they should have the final word on the world around them.

“We tend to have irrational confidence in our own experiences of the world, and to see others as misinformed, lazy, unreasonable or biased when they fail to see the world the way we do,” Lieberman said. “The evidence from neural data is clear that the gestalt cortex is central to how we construct our version of reality.”

Image of The brain’s “gestalt cortex”

The gestalt cortex is located behind the ear, between the parts of the brain responsible for processing vision, sound and touch. Matthew Lieberman/UCLA Psychology

Naive realism may be the single most underappreciated source of conflict and distrust across individuals and groups, he said.

“When others see the world differently than we do, it can serve as an existential threat to our own contact with reality and often leads to anger and suspicion about the others,” Lieberman said. “If we know how a person is seeing the world, their subsequent reactions are much more predictable.”

While the question of how people make sense of the world has been an enduring topic in social psychology, the underlying brain mechanisms have never been fully explained, Lieberman said.

Mental acts that are coherent, effortless and based on our experiences tend to occur in the gestalt cortex. For example, a person might see someone else smiling and without giving it any apparent thought, perceive that the other person is happy. Because those inferences are immediate and effortless, they typically feel more like “seeing reality” — even though happiness is an internal psychological state — than they do like “thinking,” Lieberman said.

Portrait of Matthew Lieberman

Matthew Lieberman | Brubaker Photography Los Angeles

“We believe we have merely witnessed things as they are, which makes it more difficult to appreciate, or even consider, other perspectives,” he said. “The mind accentuates its best answer and discards the rival solutions. The mind may initially process the world like a democracy where every alternative interpretation gets a vote, but it quickly ends up like an authoritarian regime where one interpretation rules with an iron fist and dissent is crushed. In selecting one interpretation, the gestalt cortex literally inhibits others.”

Previous research by Lieberman has shown that when people disagree face to face — for example on a political issue — activity in their gestalt cortices is less similar than it is for people who agree with one another. (That conclusion was supported by a 2018 study in the journal Nature Communications. UCLA psychologist Carolyn Parkinson and others found that similar neural patterns in the gestalt cortex were strong predictors of who was friends with whom.)

Gestalt was a German school of perceptual psychology whose motto was, “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” The approach focused on how the human mind integrates elements of the world into meaningful groupings.

The gestalt cortex is located behind the ear, and it is situated between the parts of the brain responsible for processing vision, sound and touch; those parts are connected by a structure called the temporoparietal junction, which is part of the gestalt cortex. In the new study, Lieberman proposes that the temporoparietal junction is central to conscious experience and that it helps organize and integrate psychological features of situations that people see so they can make sense of them effortlessly.

The gestalt cortex isn’t the only area of the brain that enables people to quickly process and interpret what they see, he said, but it is an especially important one.

Using neurosurgical recordings to understand the “social brain”

In a separate study, published in April in the journal Nature Communications, Lieberman and colleagues addressed how, given our complex social worlds, we are able to socialize with relative ease.

Using the first mass-scale neurosurgical recordings of the “social brain,” Lieberman, UCLA psychology graduate student Kevin Tan and colleagues at Stanford University showed that humans have a specialized neural pathway for social thinking.

Lieberman, author of the bestselling book “Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect,” said humans are social by nature and have an exceptional capacity for assessing the mental states of others. That ability requires the brain to process a large number of inferences from a vast array of idiosyncratic cues. So why does that process often feel so effortless compared to simple tasks like basic arithmetic?

Clear answers have been elusive for those who study social neuroscience. One culprit could be scientists’ reliance on functional magnetic resonance imaging, which is effective at scanning where brain activity occurs, but less effective at capturing the timing of that activity.

Researchers employed a technique called electrocorticography to record brain activity at millisecond and millimeter scales using thousands of neurosurgical electrodes. They found that a neurocognitive pathway that extends from the back to the front of the brain is especially active in areas closer to the front when people think about the mental states of others.

Their findings suggest that the temporoparietal junction may create a fast, effortless understanding of other people’s mental states, and that another region, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, may be more involved in thinking things through more slowly and carefully.

Predicting compatibility through AI

Resonance Inc., a company founded by Matthew Lieberman with support from UCLA, has developed an artificial intelligence algorithm based on how people distinctively see the world that can predict compatibility. The company has used the tool with thousands of UCLA commuter students to help them connect with other students who have a similar way of experiencing things.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu/news.

UCLA scholars explore the history, meaning and promise of Juneteenth

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Image of six people at a Juneteenth Emancipation Day celebration in 1900..

Juneteenth Emancipation Day celebration in 1900.

UCLA Newsroom | 

On June 19, 1865, Gordon Granger, a major general in the Union Army, marched into Galveston, Texas, announced that the Civil War was over and issued General Order No. 3: “The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” Reactions ranged from shocked amazement to outbreaks of spontaneous celebration.

The day would come to be recognized as “Juneteenth” and would finally be established as a national holiday in 2021.

As the nation prepares once again to commemorate Juneteenth, UCLA Newsroom revisits some of the stories we published to mark that federal recognition. These pieces highlight the research and insights of UCLA faculty members Eddie Cole, Karida Brown and Brenda Stevenson, who explain Juneteenth’s inception, its evolution and what the holiday means for our country.

Why schools haven’t taught about Juneteenth, and why they should

Image of Eddie Cole

Eddie Cole

Far too few Americans know the history of Juneteenth. And that ignorance is connected to the very real erasure that results from the institutional racism woven into the history of the United States.

“Let us be clear,” said Eddie Cole, an associate professor of higher education and organizational change at the UCLA School of Education & Information Studies. “Juneteenth has been taught in some American classrooms and there have long been individual teachers who offer a complex, carefully considered nuanced history of Juneteenth and slavery. But they often do so without relying on school textbooks.

“They may explore historical texts from a century ago, or other primary sources. Those teachers provide their students with a more holistic truth and a glimpse at Black liberation and triumph.

“That said, Juneteenth is not taught in most American classrooms because it is not a feel-good story,” Cole said. “It is an exemplifier of the truth. It is a stunning example of how racism and capitalism have stained the idea of an American democracy. It does not fit the mainstream narrative that centers the nation’s independence. Instead, it highlights the misdeeds, or at least the negligence, of many so-called national heroes. That alone is why it is not taught in many schools.”

Read more.

Commemorating Juneteenth is powerful, but there’s more work to be done

Image of Karida Brown and the cover of her book “Gone Home: Race and Roots Through Appalachia”

Karida Brown and the cover of her book “Gone Home: Race and Roots Through Appalachia” | UCLA

UCLA sociology professor Karida Brown didn’t grow up celebrating Juneteenth.

She learned about Juneteenth as a Black holiday while she was a graduate student at Brown University and as she worked on her book, “Gone Home: Race and Roots Through Appalachia,” which was published in 2019. During those five years, she interviewed 153 current and former residents of Harlan County, Kentucky, a coal-mining region that boomed from the 1920s through 1960s and included a large population of Black residents.

Brown’s roots reach back to Harlan County, where her parents and grandparents once lived. When she asked them about what she had learned about Juneteenth and how it has historically been celebrated in Black communities, the word “Juneteenth” didn’t connect — but the descriptions of the celebrations, and why they were held, did.

“They said, ‘Oh, you mean the eighth of August,” Brown said. “In these coal mining towns in Kentucky, that was Black Independence Day. My parents very much carry the memory of the meaning of the holiday through their experiences in their childhood, but it wasn’t something they passed down.”

As is often the case in history, progress isn’t linear. In Kentucky and other Southern states, Black communities began celebrating the eighth of August in sometime in the 1860s, commemorating the date that Andrew Johnson, then military-governor of Tennessee freed his personal slaves. Enslaved Black Americans in Texas learned of emancipation on June 19, 1865 — the first Juneteenth — more than six months after the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, took effect.

Read more.

How embracing Juneteenth’s meaning could help the U.S. face its racial justice challenges

Image of Brenda Stevenson

Brenda Stevenson

In a 2020 interview, Brenda Stevenson, an internationally renowned scholar of race, slavery, gender, family and racial conflict, shared thoughts on Juneteeth, its evolution and current iterations, and why acknowledging the date is an important part of the dialogue and push for change when it comes to racial and social justice in the U.S.

Stevenson is UCLA’s Nickoll Family Professor of History.

Much of your work as a historian is centered around finding and telling the stories of individuals, especially women, who were enslaved in this country. Can we think of Juneteeth an opportunity to remember those who never got to experience freedom?  

Definitely. Juneteenth speaks powerfully to the reality that we, as a nation, have to continue to evolve democratically, humanely and morally. It is not just about Black inequality, but the inequality and marginality that many people and groups who do not fit into a particular racial, cultural, class, gender, sexuality, and citizenship box experience in our nation.

How could Juneteeth reflections help highlight those who are caught in the current struggle by way of our system of policing and incarceration?  

The criminal justice system in our country was founded on inequalities linked to a racial hierarchy. It is one of the fundamental national institutions that must be comprehensively changed to address this deep, foundational flaw. Still, it is only one of our essential systems linked to the inequalities alive and well in our society.

It is a good place to start, but change cannot end there.

Read more.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu/news.

Image of UCLA students at commencement, beneath gold lettering reading "UCLA" on a blue background

UCLA class of 2022 celebrates the unique joy of togetherness

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Alumna Katelyn Ohashi delivered the keynote address at the first full-scale, in-person commencements at Pauley Pavilion since the pandemic
Image of UCLA students at graduation

This is more like it. After a pandemic-forced two years of virtual commencement ceremonies, in 2022 students and their loved ones were able to celebrate in person again. Image credit: David Esquivel/UCLA

Alison Hewitt and Elizabeth Kivowitz | 

Campus buzzed with graduation celebrations today fueled by crowds not seen since 2019. The return to an in-person commencement at UCLA also marks the first time the UCLA College’s undergraduate graduation was spread across three ceremonies to make room for one of UCLA’s largest graduating classes ever.

Outside Pauley Pavilion, thousands of parents and guests mingled outdoors carrying teddy bears, flowers and other gifts, as confused food-delivery robots struggled to navigate the crowd. Students in graduation gowns, leis and decorated mortarboards hugged their friends and family before dashing away to line up for the processional.

Among the dozens of graduations on campus today, the crowd outside Pauley Pavilion was the largest, with a total of about 6,100 graduates and 26,400 guests expected at the three ceremonies.

The graduates come from all over, and range in age from 18 to 79. More than 35% come from low-income families, and 36% came to UCLA as transfer students. Approximately one-third are the first generation in their families to graduate from a four-year university.

“I’ve been working toward this my whole life,” said Veronica Lavín Solano, who earned her bachelor’s in English. The first-generation student’s sash featured the flag of Mexico, where her parents immigrated from. “I’m so glad my parents get to be here in person. They are so proud of me … UCLA was my dream school.”

Image of Katelyn Ohashi speaking at UCLA College’s 2022 commencement in Pauley Pavilion.

Katelyn Ohashi speaking at UCLA College’s 2022 commencement in Pauley Pavilion. Image credit: David Esquivel/UCLA

Psychology major William Molina’s family described their son’s elation at graduating in person, after the pandemic turned the transfer student’s first year at UCLA into a remote experience.

“I’m so proud and excited to see him graduate,” said his father Nelson Molina, an immigrant from El Salvador who said he spent his life working hard so his kids could succeed.

Over the course of the week, about 1,300 graduates from the classes of 2020 and 2021 will also attend in-person celebrations to make up for the remote graduations during the pandemic. Other ceremonies across campus featured keynotes addresses by presenters including U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, actor, activist and alumnus George Takei, Academy-Award winning actor Troy Kotsur, Indigenous artist and alumna Mercedes Dorame and U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu. Award-winning gymnast, activist and UCLA alumna Katelyn Ohashi spoke at all three of the UCLA College ceremonies in Pauley Pavilion.

Image of students wearing decorated graduation caps

David Esquivel/UCLA

Inside Pauley, the required face masks concealed smiles but nothing could hide the crowd’s enthusiasm.

“After two years, amazingly, of virtual and hybrid commencement events, it’s a joy to be back in Pauley Pavilion for today’s ceremony,” said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. “A tradition like this one bonds you to generations of UCLA students who have come before.”

He acknowledged the trials of recent years — not just the pandemic, but racial injustice, climate change, a polarizing presidential election, horrific mass shootings and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“These experiences have challenged you, but they’ve shaped you,” Block said. “They gave you greater respect for science and truth, and a stronger recognition of the dangers of misinformation.”

Block had to pause as students cheered their acknowledgement of the threat of disinformation.

“Even as they stirred up anguish, all these events etched on you a compassion and empathy,” he continued, “as well as a commitment to seeking justice and contributing to the greater good.”

Image of Chancellor Gene Block and keynote speaker Katelyn Ohashi, alumna, gymnast and activist.

Chancellor Gene Block and keynote speaker Katelyn Ohashi, alumna, gymnast and activist. Image credit: David Esquivel/UCLA

Ohashi, an elite gymnast who went viral while at UCLA with her perfect-10 routine, has used her platform to speak out on topics like mental health, body-shaming, sexual assault and cyberbullying. One of the UCLA College’s youngest alumni speakers ever, Ohashi graduated in 2019, at the last in-person commencement before the pandemic. She encouraged the class of 2022 to overcome fear and hesitation and embrace opportunity, and recounted her days at UCLA working with the student-run Bruin Shelter to support housing-insecure students.

“When [Bruin Shelter] first started and began looking for housing, they knocked on 100 church doors, where they heard 100 ‘no’s.’ It wasn’t until their 101st door they knocked on that they finally received their ‘yes,’” Ohashi said. “Most missed opportunities don’t come from not taking them, but from not seeking them… Most of the time, life doesn’t come knocking on your door. Instead, don’t hesitate to knock on doors and if you don’t hear a ‘yes’ your first time, it doesn’t mean there won’t be one. Now is the time to live life fully and try all the things you want.”

Image of students at the UCLA College Commencement.

Students at the UCLA College Commencement. Image credit: David Esquivel/UCLA

Twenty-year-old graduating senior Stephanie Widjaja, who left high school for community college two years early to get closer to her dream of transferring to UCLA and becoming a pediatrician, reminded her classmates that their path to success doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s.

“I stumbled my way through community college, thinking that UCLA was an unobtainable destination. I was expected to achieve greater things by others, but I could not fully believe in it myself. It was not until I opened up my UCLA acceptance letter and sat in my chair dumbstruck for a good five minutes that I realized dreams do come true, even if the path is non-linear and full of tears,” Widjaja said. “Congratulations Class of 2022! You have finally made it! Being a Bruin and making it out of these unprecedented times shows that you have a resilience like no other.”

David Esquivel/UCLA

Widjaja led her classmates as they all shifted their tassels from right to left after Block formally conferred their degrees. As some students captured the tassel-turn with selfie videos, the room roared with cheers and applause from the thousands of parents, family and friends attending in person.

As the ceremony drew to a close, a few dozen mortarboards sailed festively into the air and the alma mater boomed over the sound system. The thunderous applause, group selfies, hugs with fellow graduates and all the other little things missing from remote celebrations came roaring back.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu/news.

 

Image of a person in front of the U.S. Capitol holding a sign that reads "Abortion is health care"

UCLA-led research shows majorities of both political parties support legal abortion

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Two national surveys that spanned demographic groups showed opposition to complete abortion bans
Image of a person holding a sign with text that says ABORTION IS HEALTH CARE

Despite research showing that a majority of Americans support legalized abortion, the Supreme Court is expected to overturn or limit Roe v. Wade in June 2022. Image credit: Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash

Jessica Wolf | 

Regardless of race, ethnicity and even political party preference, two separate UCLA-led surveys reveal that majorities of people in each group support access to legal abortion in the United States.

Recent large-scale surveys of voters and non-voters by UCLA political scientists Lorrie Frasure, Matt Barreto, Lynn Vavreck and Chris Tausanovitch took a pulse on a variety of policy issues, including abortion. These separate findings support previous research and literature that shows broad support for legal abortion.

Data from The Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape Project, led by Vavreck and Tausanovitch show broad support for abortion across political party lines. Nationscape was a weekly survey fielded from July 2019 through January 2021, reaching nearly 500,000 voters and non-voters representative of the U.S. adult population.

Most Democrats and Republicans — as well as independents — said they do not think abortion should be outlawed completely.

Chart showing data on: Should abortion be outlawed UCLA Chart of Nationscape data showing that 13.6% of Democrats agree that abortion should be outlawed, 71.9% disagree and 14.5% are unsure. For Republicans: 32.8% agree it should be outlawed, 49.4% disagree and 17.8% are unsure. For independents: 17.2% agree it should be outlawed, 59.2% disagree and 23.6% are unsure.

And, according to Nationscape data, most also agreed that abortion should not be limited only to instances of rape, incest or threat to the life of the mother.

Chart showing data on: Should abortion remain accessible in all cases? UCLA Graph of Nationscape data showing that among Democrats 70.5% agree that abortion should be legal beyond cases of rape, incest or threat to the life of the mother, 16.2% disagre and 13.2% are not sure. Among Republicans, 43% agree abortion should be legal beyond cases of rape, incest or threat to the life of the mother, 42% disagree and 15% are unsure. Among indepdents, 53% agree abortion should be legal beyond cases of rape, incest or threat to the life of the mother, 24.6% disagree and 22.4% are unsure.

Despite the two major political parties’ platforms generally taking opposing positions on abortion — Democrats support, Republicans oppose — there are people aligned with the Republican party who support legal abortion and people aligned with the Democratic party who oppose abortion. But for these cross-positioned voters, it’s important to note that abortion is not their biggest priority, Vavreck said.

Nationscape researchers know this because of a unique approach they employed to test what matters most to the electorate, essentially forcing survey respondents to make choices based on groupings of hot-button topics. The survey included 44 different policy statements and 8 hypothetical attributes of political candidates. A set of these statements were randomized into two groups of options. Survey respondents were asked to choose which group most aligned with their priorities.

For example, a Democrat who opposes legal abortion might be faced with two groupings of policy statements — one that included limiting or ending abortion. But, if the other group of policy statements held items that were more important to that person, like not deporting undocumented immigrants, they would select that option. The same held true the other way for Republicans who support legal abortion. If the other bucket of topics included things they cared more about than abortion, that was their choice.

“This happens on other issues beside abortion too, and what this tells us is that these voters and potential voters are not cross-pressured within their party. They’re not torn. They just have other priorities — they are cross-positioned, but not cross-pressured,” Vavreck said. “These surveys demonstrate that vast majorities support keeping abortion legal but that doesn’t necessarily mean that this issue is going to be pivotal to their vote choice.”

The fourth and largest installment of the Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey, or CMPS, led by Frasure and Barreto, alongside Janelle Wong from University of Maryland, College Park, and Edward Vargas from Arizona State University, asked several questions about abortion, reporting results based on the race of respondents.

This survey is conducted after every presidential election, and its questions are drafted by a broad consortium of race and ethnicity politics scholars from across the United States. In 2020, the CMPS was offered in 10 languages to nearly 15,000 respondents.

CMPS data, by way of several questions, show broad support for abortion across four self-reported racial groups — Asian, Black, Latino and white.

Overall, majorities from all groups reported they either support legal abortion or are neutral on the issue, with broad margins of support across all racial and ethnic groups.

Chart showing data on: Support for abortion by race/ethicity UCLA According to data from the Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey tracking support for abotion by race/ethnicity: 59% of Asians support abortion rights, 26% neither support or oppose and 14% oppose. 59% of Black people support abortion rights, 25% neither support or oppose and 16% oppose. 53% of Latinos support abortion rights, 24% neither support or oppose and 23% oppose. 50% of whites support abortion rights, 21% neither support or oppose and 29% oppose.

“Although the CMPS data was collected before news of the Supreme Court leak, it nonetheless reaffirms what decades of public opinion research has found —across every racial and ethnic group, Americans support safe and legal access to abortion,” said Barreto, who added that there are very low rates of opposition to abortion rights for women.

“The CMPS study makes clear that among Black, Latino, Asian and White Americans alike, there remains strong support for maintaining the protections of Roe v. Wade,” Barreto said.

When asked if limiting abortion was a specific priority for their racial community, most respondents said that it was a low priority.

Chart showing data on: Should access to abortion be restricted? UCLA This graph of data from the Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey shows what percentage of different racial/ethnic groups say restricting access to abortion should be a high or low priority. Among Asians: 70% said restriction abortion access should be low priority, while 30% said it should be a high priority. Among Black people: 61% said restriction abortion access should be low priority, while 39% said it should be a high priority. Among Latinos: 57% said restriction abortion access should be low priority, while 43% said it should be a high priority. Among whites: 62% said restriction abortion access should be low priority, while 38% said it should be a high priority.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu/news.

Image of UCLA Chancellor Gene Block addressing attendees of the UCLA Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies launchImage by Vince Bucci

Celebrating the launch of the UCLA Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies

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Image of UCLA Chancellor Gene Block addressing attendees of the UCLA Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies launch

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block addresses attendees of the UCLA Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies launch | Image by Vince Bucci

Editor’s note: Check out our feature article, “Food for Thought,” in the UCLA College Magazine for additional coverage of the UCLA Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies and its progress.

By Jonathan Riggs | June 6, 2022

Over a fresh farm-to-table meal courtesy of Lulu restaurant’s David Tanis and Alice Waters and the soundtrack of a UCLA student jazz group, members of the Bruin family gathered Monday, April 18 at the Hammer Museum to celebrate the launch of the UCLA Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies.

“Food is one of humanity’s few universally shared experiences, but questions about how to feed the world are some of the most complex and pressing issues of our time,” said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. “These essential questions will be tackled by the Institute’s scholars and partners, who will take a holistic approach to understanding all there is to know about food and its impact on society.”

Guest of honor Marcie H. Rothman traced the night’s celebration all the way back to her parents, Ray and Shirley, who inspired her and her sister, Rita — all proud Bruins — to view the world with curiosity and to appreciate UCLA for the vast knowledge, impact and community spirit that epitomize its community.

When her own journey as a successful television chef and lifelong learner dovetailed with the opportunity to solidify UCLA’s global leadership in the food studies arena, Rothman was proud to help the Institute take permanent shape.

“Food connects and sustains, and the Institute will represent all of that and more for current and future students and faculty,” she said. “Tonight would have been my dad’s hundredth birthday, and I know both my parents would have considered news of the Institute the greatest gift they could have asked for.”

Highlights from the launch of the UCLA Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies, featuring speakers (in order of appearance) Adriana Galván, Dean of Undergraduate Education; Marcie Rothman, TV and radio personality, food educator and author; Amy Rowat, Marcie H. Rothman Presidential Term Chair for Food Studies; and Evan Kleiman, speaker, chef, author, radio host (KCRW) and restaurant owner.

Dean of the Division of Undergraduate Education Adriana Galván took the opportunity to thank her predecessors, Judi Smith and Pat Turner, for paving the way for the division’s first institute and reflected on why this is such a transformational step for UCLA.

“It is clear to see that the building blocks of the Institute are as dynamic as they are interdisciplinary, and that’s what makes it so special,” she said. “The UCLA Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies will house UCLA’s popular Food Studies minor; provide ongoing funding for research, curriculum and library resources; and will bring together faculty, staff, students, chefs and members of the community.”

Galván went on to discuss how the global-leading work of the Institute will use food as a lens to guide and inform public policy while addressing wide-ranging issues, including food insecurity, climate change and advancing innovations in food systems, that impact us all.

“By providing a means and the resources to explore these concepts, our students will have an unparalleled collaborative opportunity and the experience of a lifetime to enact true change,” she added. “They will get to see how their work in the classroom translates to work in the real world.”

Renowned for pioneering the use of cooking as a medium to engage students and general audiences with science, biophysicist Amy Rowat shared her excitement for the new Institute, as well as her gratitude for being named UCLA’s inaugural Marcie H. Rothman Professor of Food Studies.

“I’m both thrilled and extremely grateful that the Marcie H. Rothman Presidential Chair will support my students’ food-based research to realize our vision of a world where we can produce delicious, nutritious foods to sustainably feed all,” Rowat said. “I’m also excited to expand my education research, using food to engage students in tackling complex societal challenges through interdisciplinary approaches.”

Rowat shared details from a new class she’s developing for the Institute’s Chef in Residence program, which includes studying historical narratives of enslaved Black chefs, learning about diffusion equations by marinating tofu, and exploring how soil pollutants can contribute to systemic health inequities.

“Food is truly such a powerful medium to engage students to become critical thinkers and advocates who will address pressing societal issues,” she said. “The Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies is a beacon of hope and innovation that will fortify this interdisciplinary food-focused approach to solve the challenges of our next generation.”

Famed KCRW “Good Food” host and restaurateur Evan Kleiman also spoke, describing how her life and career have been driven by curiosity focused through food, and how it can bring us into a better understanding of our humanity.

“My extreme focus on food made me kind of an outlier — it’s still hard to convince some people that food is worthy of serious academic study,” she said. “Recently, I asked Yale’s Paul Freedman why he thought that food was so often dismissed as an area of serious study. He replied that ‘materiality, necessity and repetition contribute to the apparent banality of food.’ I would say that this apparent banality is precisely why food is such a powerful holder of identity and culture.”

“The Institute has an exceptional opportunity to become a focus for deep interdisciplinary discussions of culture, community and how our decisions affect personal and planetary health,” Kleiman added. “Our health and wellbeing are linked to worldwide decisions about food production resources, and these decisions have consequences and costs regarding human health, poverty, justice and the natural world.”

As the evening drew to a close, Marcie H. Rothman led a toast honoring Alice Waters for being such a visionary UCLA collaborator while celebrating a bright future of many more efforts to come.

“I can think of nothing more important than connecting education and food,” said Waters. “The Rothman Family Institute has the potential to teach students the values we desperately need in order to live together on this planet: stewardship of the land, equity, community and nourishment. This edible education institute will be a prototype for schools in this country and around the world.”

Guests lingered over their dinners under the party lights in the trees, visibly inspired by discussions of the UCLA Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies and its limitless potential.

“Thank you for joining us to launch an institute that will not only challenge the way we look at our plates, but will also reframe how we see our neighborhood stores, farms, supply chains, restaurants, and more,” Chancellor Block concluded. “This is a spectacular specialty that will really define UCLA and bring about important change.”

For more of Our Stories at the College, click here.

Images of, from left to right, UCLA College transfer students Carina Salazar, Chris Adams, Daniella Efrat and Darnel Grant.

Stories of success: transfer students celebrate their UCLA graduation

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Images of, from left to right, UCLA College transfer students Carina Salazar, Chris Adams, Daniella Efrat and Darnel Grant.

Left to right: Carina Salazar, Chris Adams, Daniella Efrat and Darnel Grant.

By Jonathan Riggs | June 3, 2022

“What I tell everyone I work with,” says Carina Salazar, director of UCLA’s Transfer Student Center, “is that you don’t succeed at UCLA despite being a transfer student. You succeed at UCLA because you’re a transfer student.”

Nearly a quarter of UCLA’s undergraduates are transfer students; what they bring to campus in terms of their richly diverse life experience cannot be overstated. They arrive at UCLA having made intentional choices and even sacrifices that reflect just what it means to them to become Bruins—one current transfer student living in the residence halls, for example, decided it was her turn to get an education after her children graduated from college.

Image of Carina Salazar

Carina Salazar,  Transfer Student Center director

Established in 2009, the UCLA Transfer Student Center is the go-to resource for current and future transfer students with a stated mission “to provide a welcoming environment and create a community that is inclusive of all lived experiences.”

A transfer student herself, Salazar was born in rural Mexico and was the first in her family to graduate from college, so she knows what the experience can mean, especially during commencement season.

“It’s such a powerful, emotional experience to see transfer students graduating from UCLA, because the transformation they have experienced here will change the course of their life forever,” she says. “When we meet the needs of our transfer students and help them succeed, the experience for all students is better for it.”

“Transfer students are vibrant, essential voices in our shared Bruin community,” says Adriana Galván, dean of undergraduate education. “Together, we are UCLA and our united potential is limitless.”

Here are a few snapshots of success among our newest Bruin alumni who transferred to UCLA.

 

Image of Chris Adams

Chris Adams

Staying Inspired

For a long time, attending college seemed like an impossibility to Chris Adams. He’d dropped out of high school, had a son and was focused on football coaching. But his growing interest in politics and civil rights activism inspired him to get his GED and then complete community college with highest honors.

Transferring via a UCLA College Reentry Scholarship, Adams held a job on campus and fell in love with his coursework. He joined the national civil rights organization People’s Alliance for Justice and traveled to Minneapolis with the group after the murder of George Floyd to offer assistance to community members in need. He graduated last quarter with a B.A. in sociology—again with highest honors—and is now preparing to take the LSAT.

“If it wasn’t for the support I received at UCLA and the encouragement of my mentors, I wouldn’t have believed I could ever start down the path of becoming an attorney,” says Adams. “Sometimes I can’t believe that everything I dreamed of and worked for actually came to fruition.”

Today he finds himself in a unique position, helping inspire two important people in his life to find their way to higher education as well: his high-school-aged son and his mother.

“My son is getting a different type of high school education than I did, and I couldn’t be prouder. As he looks ahead to his own college journey, we talk about the things I learned in sociology and how we can both work to change some of the structures in place,” Adams says. “And I couldn’t be prouder that my mom went back to school and is battling it out now. We definitely laugh about the universal college student desire to procrastinate on writing papers, but she’s the smartest person I know.”

As he looks ahead to his next steps and reaffirms his commitment to public service, Adams says that becoming a Bruin has given him the ability to picture a fuller future for himself, of service and purpose.

“The entire UCLA community, from my classmates to the Scholarship Resource Center to the faculty and alumni have inspired me to want to become a leader,” he says. “I wouldn’t be where I am without my mentors, and I’m eager to do what I can to make it easier for those who come after me.”

 

Image of Darnel Grant

Darnel Grant

Working Hard

Like so many other talented young people, Darnel Grant originally moved to Los Angeles to get into the entertainment industry, armed with more enthusiasm than material resources. Struggling to support himself in an expensive city, Grant faced housing insecurity for a time—an experience that later informed his studies at UCLA after he transferred in from community college.

“I started my undergraduate experience at UCLA thinking I wanted a career in politics, but my focus has changed to housing, finance and urban planning,” says Grant, who worked with faculty on research exploring how to improve housing issues in Los Angeles and across the U.S. Next fall, he will start a master’s program in urban and regional planning at the Luskin School of Public Affairs.

No one will be celebrating his graduation more exuberantly, however, than his big sister, who has always encouraged him to realize his full potential. And joining in the celebration will be his allies in UCLA’s Scholarship Resource Center.

“SRC Director Angela Deaver Campbell reminded me of family: she always had my best interests at heart and helped me believe in myself,” he says. “There were times I’d come to her, overwhelmed, and she’d have me feeling like I was the heavyweight champion of the world.”

Thanks in part to the SRC’s support and encouragement to apply for the aid he so desperately needed, Grant earned the Eugene and Maxine Rosenfeld Scholarship, which allowed him to start saving money for the first time in his life and focus completely on his studies.

“I really hope I can help the SRC in some capacity one day. All in all, I’m so impressed with how much UCLA has molded me,” he says. “I feel prepared for what’s next and so, so happy I got through. There were some really intense moments, but this experience proved to me what I can do.”

That said, Grant is definitely not someone to rest on his laurels—he’s planning to work the entire summer and then pursue an internship to gain experience in the housing finance field.

“I definitely have a lot to prove still,” he says. “When I get to a certain point I can prioritize rest, but until then, I’m focused on work.”

 

Image of Daniella Efrat

Daniella Efrat

Realizing a Dream

Daniella Efrat’s family knew how much she had always wanted to attend UCLA. In fact, after she successfully applied to transfer in from Los Angeles Valley College, they may have celebrated even more than she did.

“My grandparents printed out a picture of my acceptance letter to UCLA, framed it and hung it on the wall,” she says. “Seeing how happy they were for me meant everything.”

A political science major with minors in public affairs and labor studies, Efrat came to UCLA after completing an internship at the California Labor Commissioner’s office. Moved to action by the stories of people she helped there, she began an independent research project at UCLA conducting an archival study of immigration-related, retaliation wage claims in California since 2013—the first of its type.

“I’m really passionate about research and public service, and my professional goal is to help immigrant workers by bolstering their legal protections as well as their awareness of these protections,” she says. “I’m going to do my Ph.D. at Stanford in sociology and then start Yale Law School right after—I would love to become a law professor to focus on these issues.”

As excited as she was to transfer to UCLA, Efrat struggled to find her confidence when she first made the switch. But by reaching out to professors whose work she admired, she began to develop a network of mentors who helped her find the right path for her unique journey.

“The best thing you can do—especially at a big school like UCLA—is to contact people and broaden your circle,” she says. “It can be life-changing to find mentors who can guide you, and that relationship can begin with a single conversation or email where you ask a question. I still talk to Rebecca Blustein in the Scholarship Resource Center about my career plans, and she still goes out of her way to help me—you’d be surprised at how generous people can be with their time.”

As her time as a UCLA undergraduate comes to an end, Efrat is able to look back with pride on all that she accomplished in the time she was here—especially during such a unique time.

“I’m proudest that I was able to engage in everything that UCLA has to offer, even during COVID,” Efrat says. “I always dreamed of coming here and I know I made the most of my Bruin experience.”

For more of Our Stories at the College, click here.

Illustration of a solar sail–propelled spacecraft leaving the solar system after a slingshot maneuver using the sun’s gravity to gain speed.Credit: Artur Davoyan and Ella Maru Studio

Q&A: Space physicist Jacob Bortnik on the new UCLA SPACE Institute

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Illustration of a solar sail–propelled spacecraft leaving the solar system after a slingshot maneuver using the sun’s gravity to gain speed.

Illustration of a solar sail–propelled spacecraft leaving the solar system after a slingshot maneuver using the sun’s gravity to gain speed. The concept was developed by UCLA professor Artur Davoyan. Credit: Artur Davoyan and Ella Maru Studio

Jonathan Riggs |

With the launch this spring of the UCLA SPACE Institute, the campus has a new umbrella organization to unite UCLA’s wide array of space-related research activities.

The institute — whose name is an acronym for Space and Planetary Sciences, Applications, Communication, and Engineering — will facilitate collaboration among faculty, staff and students from the UCLA College Division of Physical Sciences, the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, the UCLA Anderson School of Management and other campus units.
Image of Jacob Bortnik

Courtesy of Jacob Bortnik

One of the institute’s leaders is Jacob Bortnik, a UCLA professor of space physics whose award-winning research helps predict space weather using artificial intelligence in order to protect people and technological systems, not only in orbit but also on the ground. In an interview, he spoke about why even non-scientists should be intrigued by the study of space and the new opportunities that the institute will create for UCLA scholars.

Why is the new institute so important?

I couldn’t even estimate how many faculty, researchers, technical staff, postdocs and students there are at UCLA whose work touches on space — it’s in the hundreds at least — but we don’t all know each other’s work yet. It’s important that we understand the kinds of problems other researchers are tackling, because very often, innovative approaches and solutions exist in different domains that can be brought into an adjacent discipline with tremendous success.

The institute will gather all of those amazing people, build relationships and move everything forward faster — think about something like the COVID-19 vaccine, where lab work that had been done in parallel for decades was ready to go when we needed it, and how much more progress we made after everyone was in conversation.

Aside from the obvious ones, which UCLA academic disciplines might have interesting links to space research?

It’s thrilling to think about how space research can overlap with other disciplines: space law, space-based biomedical technology, space medicine, sustainable agriculture beyond Earth, or even entertainment industry professionals working with the space environment as their creative medium. Those are just a few of the areas of research we hope to expand at UCLA.

Image of UCLA’s first student-built spacecraft, the ELFIN CubeSat, launched in 2018

UCLA’s first student-built spacecraft, the ELFIN CubeSat, launched in 2018. It is still in orbit and gathering data. Image credit: Ethan Tsai

What new resources will the institute provide?

We are aiming to provide financial and administrative support for the development of innovative scientific experiments and satellite mission concepts, and the novel instruments needed to carry out those experiments.

Missions to Mars, Jupiter or Saturn cost billions of dollars, and gaining NASA approval for those experiments is very competitive — you have to prove there is zero chance of your experiment failing. Other labs and universities have internal development funds to cover the preliminary legwork it takes to demonstrate their projects’ readiness, but UCLA doesn’t.

Also, Southern California is the country’s aerospace hub, and it’s in the industry’s best interest to support UCLA, which is right in its backyard. The SPACE Institute will enable UCLA to spearhead big missions with NASA and give students a lot more opportunities to get involved in various aspects of mission and instrument design and scientific exploration from the ground up.

How else will the institute support students?

You don’t have to study astrophysics to work for NASA or become an astronaut; we want the SPACE Institute to show students how broad that scope of career paths really is. Ultimately, we would also like to offer internships to students from underrepresented groups. There is a huge need in the field for diversity, but it can be hard to climb the ladder with how much sacrifice and time is involved.

We plan to work with graduates in STEM fields who are interested in getting professional master’s degrees so they can enter the rapidly expanding space industry more quickly than by going through the typical pathway for doctoral students and postdocs. And we want to help current UCLA students connect with industry internships.

We will also begin public outreach programs, especially geared to K-12 students.

Image of Professor Richard Wirz with a miniature xenon ion thruster, called MiXI, that was developed at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering

Professor Richard Wirz with a miniature xenon ion thruster, called MiXI, that was developed at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. The device can provide high-precision thrust for small satellite missions. Image credit: Wirz Research Group/UCLA

What current UCLA space-related projects do you find especially exciting?

UCLA students have built CubeSats — micro satellites that help scientists better understand magnetic storms in near-Earth space. UCLA researchers are discovering oceans and volcanoes on planetary moons. Space physicists are understanding the sun and plasma processes that lead to high-energy particles and the majestic aurorae. And UCLA astronomers are discovering exoplanets by the hundreds. It’s quite amazing!

Also, one of our engineering colleagues is working on a solar sail, a super-thin sheet that folds out to the size of an Olympic swimming pool and sends a spacecraft shooting out of the solar system about 300 times the speed of a high-powered rifle bullet. The technology could make vast interplanetary and interstellar distances more traversable.

Why should everyone, even non-scientists, be excited about space research?

It’s important to recognize that we’re on the cusp of something huge. We’re becoming a spacefaring civilization, much like when we became seafaring in the 15th century or aeronautical in the 20th century. People already are going up to the edge of space for tourism, and in the next decade or two, the number of manned spacecraft flights will increase, and we will likely send humans to the Moon — and possibly Mars.

Above all, I hope that elevating humanity’s aspirations will somehow elevate our consciousness, and make us less petty and more expansive and daring. It would do us all good to understand that we‘re all on this “spaceship Earth” together, and it is quite fragile.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more of Our Stories at the College, click here.

Image of Zerxes BhadhaImage by Elora Greenwale

Written in the stars

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Graduating with a double major and a sense of wonder

Image of Zerxes Bhadha

Zerxes Bhadha | Image by Elora Greenwale

By Jonathan Riggs

At first, Zerxes Bhadha wasn’t sure about applying to UCLA—their father and brother were graduates, and they wanted to give something new a try. (Their mother, a USC alumna, crossed her fingers and hoped.)

“And then I stepped onto campus for Bruin Day and realized the energy here was unparalleled,” laughs Bhadha, who uses they/them pronouns. “There was something about UCLA I just vibed with, and I realized: this is the right place for me.”

Bhadha entered UCLA as an undeclared physical sciences major with a wise-beyond-their-years approach to college life: attending every office hours session to have actual conversations with professors and teaching assistants to learn about their research and glean their advice.

“My TA for a communications class was an urban planning doctoral student, and I thought what he was describing sounded really cool,” Bhadha says. “And then he told me that UCLA Luskin had literally just started an undergrad program.”

Even so, becoming a Public Affairs major felt like only part of the answer—Bhadha was still deeply drawn to science. After all, one of their earliest memories was their father helping them peer through a telescope to examine the moon’s craters, sparking a lifelong love affair with outer space.

“I knew I wanted to double major, and I knew I wanted it to be something for me, something that I would really enjoy,” they say. “And so I double majored in astrophysics, which I wouldn’t trade for the world.”

Their unique combination of majors has paid off: Bhadha has lined up a three-month post-graduation job doing astronomy outreach work at Joshua Tree National Park. It’s very much in line with their dedication to learning while giving back—Bhadha has been a longtime volunteer for the Prison Education Program, teaching astronomy to people who are incarcerated.

“I have always loved the idea that astronomy is very much an equalizer: no matter who or where you are, we’re all underneath the same night sky,” Bhadha says. “It’s meant so much to me to get our students involved asking questions and rediscovering that sense of wonder we have as children looking up at the stars.”

As excited as they are to graduate, Bhadha looks ahead to all the possibilities of life beyond college with a sense of excitement as well as responsibility.

“I’ve had the best experience at UCLA and have come a long way personally. Four years ago, I wouldn’t have thought to ask the questions I’ve learned to ask since,” they say. “I know who I am so much more than I did, but I’m also looking forward to continuing to grow. I’m stoked about the idea that I don’t have a plan beyond Joshua Tree, because figuring it out will be exciting.”

During this time of looking back to look forward, and of celebrations, decisions and endless potential, Bhadha is eagerly anticipating some moments of peaceful reflection in the desert, and the time and space to start a new chapter completely of their own devising.

“All of us have so much power, and I want to use mine to help build the worlds we want to build and do the work that is so special and important to me,” Bhadha says. “I urge everyone to take a moment to look at the night sky and appreciate how lucky we are to be here.”

For more of Our Stories at the College, click here.