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Sarah Haley

Sarah Haley receives Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholars Award

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Sarah Haley

Sarah Haley | UCLA

UCLA Newsroom | January 24, 2023

Sarah Haley, an associate professor of gender studies and African American studies in the UCLA College, has received the Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholars Award.

Each Freedom Scholar receives a one-time $250,000 award, which has no restrictions. The awards are designed to provide greater freedom to scholars, supporting them to advance their work however they see fit. They were launched in 2020 to spotlight commitment to scholarship benefitting movements led by Black and Indigenous people, migrants, queer people, poor people and people of color.

Haley’s expertise focuses on Black feminism, U.S. women’s and gender history, African American history from 1865 to the present, carceral studies, and labor and working-class studies.

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

Graduates wearing caps and gowns at the 2-18 American Indian Studies graduation ceremony at UCLA.

To enhance Indigenous scholarship, UCLA formally establishes American Indian studies department

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The goal is eventually to increase the Native student, faculty and staff populations

Graduates wearing caps and gowns at the 2-18 American Indian Studies graduation ceremony at UCLA.

Even before achieving departmental status, the American Indian studies program has helped scholars thrive, as seen in this 2018 commencement photo. | UCLA American Indian Studies

Jonathan Riggs | December 15, 2022

As they look ahead to the end of their senior years, both Desirae Barragan (Gabrieleno Band of Mission Indians) and Lorraine Mazzetti (Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians) have a lot to be proud of — including the news that UCLA’s American Indian studies interdepartmental program will become a full-fledged department.

“Many generations of Native Bruins, including myself, have provided their voices, energy and advocacy efforts to prove the need to departmentalize American Indian studies,” said Barragan, who is double majoring in American Indian studies and human biology and society. “As a Gabrieleno student studying on my ancestral homelands, it is an absolute privilege to be the first of my tribal community to be graduating from UCLA this spring.”

Said Mazzetti, who is double majoring in American Indian studies and political science: “I’m very excited that American Indian studies is becoming a department. American Indian studies has given me the space to talk about my experiences living on the reservation and to learn about other Native students’ experiences in a single classroom.”

The goal is eventually to increase the Native student, faculty and staff populations while deepening UCLA’s commitment to research and scholarship into Indigenous studies. The change to department status marks a transformation from the program that created one of the world’s first master’s degrees in American Indian studies in 1982 and draws its roots from UCLA’s American Indian Studies Center, which was established in 1969.

“I’ve been the American Indian studies chair off and on for nearly 30 years, and this has been a goal for as long as I can remember. To say I’m delighted would be an understatement,” said Paul Kroskrity, interim chair of American Indian studies and professor of anthropology. “This represents a reprioritization by UCLA and the UC system to do the best job they can for Native American students and the field itself. I’m proud we can build this department in the proper way.”

The existing American Indian studies program offers an undergraduate major, a minor and a master’s degree and seeks to merge the concerns and aims of higher education with those of Indigenous communities.

With its new status, the department will be able to hire its own faculty and staff and to make key decisions on its own. When it was an interdepartmental program, American Indian studies faculty and staff were hired by and held appointments in other departments. Although the new American Indian studies department looks forward to continuing and expanding these rich engagements and collaborations, having this autonomy will make a big difference, both symbolically and in practice.

“This is really exciting, important and a long time in the making,” said Shannon Speed (Chickasaw Nation), director of the American Indian Studies Center in UCLA’s Institute of American Cultures and a professor of anthropology and gender studies. “It puts us on par with UCLA’s other ethnic studies centers, which have all departmentalized, and it gives us a little more freedom to create our own future.”

The move is the third in a series of initiatives that signal increased resources, opportunities and representation for Native American communities and voices at UCLA and beyond, including the University of California’s Native American Opportunity Plan and UCLA’s Native American and Pacific Islander Bruins Rising Initiative.

“This is a landmark moment that will give us a greater platform to elevate research and scholarship, recruit more Native and non-Native students, and propel our ascension in terms of being the place to do American Indian studies in the United States,” said Angela Riley (Citizen Potawatomi Nation), director of UCLA School of Law’s Native Nations Law and Policy Center and a professor of law and American Indian studies.

Tim Topper (Cheyenne River Sioux), a student services advisor in the new department, echoed others in saying that departmental status sends a powerful message of inclusion and investment.

“American Indian studies becoming a department is a huge deal because it represents a foundation for us to better recruit and retain Native faculty and staff,” said Topper, who noted how excited he was to come to UCLA to work directly with California Indigenous communities. “It can be hard for Native students to find that mentor they can connect with, and I think we’ll set our students up even better for success when they can see themselves more reflected in and out of the classroom. It’s going to take time, but we’re creating a pipeline for true change.”

And word can travel fast across Indian country, Topper added, where many people are deeply connected to and invested in what colleges and universities are doing in this field. Both at UCLA and far beyond, this formal recognition reflects a renewed commitment to further elevating Native American representation in higher education.

This is especially important to Barragan and Mazzetti, who hope to see the department tackle new priorities, such as reimagining the curriculum to include additional undergraduate courses in traditional ecological knowledge, tribal leadership and federal Indian law.

“It is hard for Native students to relearn generational trauma and apply it to our essays for a grade, and I hope the new department realizes that they are teaching the next tribal leaders,” Mazzetti said. “I am ready to see what the department will bring to UCLA and what they provide to the next generation of Native students.”

“I look forward to the new opportunities that future generations of Native Bruins will get to experience,” Barragan said. “I am honored to contribute to Indigenizing UCLA and hope that as an institution, it will amplify and uplift Native voices, wants and needs while supporting Native-led initiatives.”

Ensuring that this milestone development runs smoothly is a priority for many beyond the new department as well.

“The sky is the limit for what AIS can accomplish in this new chapter,” said Abel Valenzuela, interim dean of the division of social sciences in the UCLA College. “We are very fortunate to build on our base of excellence in AIS where we have some of the best — if not the very best — American Indian studies faculty, staff and students in the country.”

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

Professor’s book spotlights legacy of Mexican political organizers in the American West

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Kelly Lytle Hernández’s ‘Bad Mexicans’ comes at a time when L.A.’s politics reckon with racism

Bad Mexicans book cover and Kelly Lytle Hernández

Kelly Lytle Hernández, author and Thomas E. Lifka Professor of History at UCLA.

Madeline Adamo | November 29, 2022

Editor’s note: This page was updated on Nov. 30 to correct the name of the center that organized the talk.

Written with the pacing and drama of a spy novel, historian Kelly Lytle Hernández’s latest book, “Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands,” aims to illuminate the far-too-overlooked story of the magonistas, a group of dissidents who were organizing in Mexico at the turn of the 20th century to oust dictator Porfirio Díaz.

Led by radicalized journalist Ricardo Flores Magón, who communicated with his followers through Regeneración, the newspaper he founded in 1900, the magonistas fled Mexico after years of suppression and regrouped in the U.S. borderlands. Most of them set up in Los Angeles, where they relaunched their rebel newspaper and incited an army of migrant workers and cotton pickers — a cause of great concern for governments in the U.S. that had great investments in Díaz’s Mexico.

Díaz, who called the magonistas “bad” Mexicans (or malos Mexicanos), pursued their leader with the help of the U.S. government. Flores Magón evaded capture until 1907, after which he spent his final years in and out of prison. Though his story isn’t widely known, historians have long credited the magonistas’ efforts with eventually leading to Díaz’s ousting.

“‘Bad Mexicans’ tells the story of how (the magonistas) built their social movement here in the United States,” Lytle Hernández told the audience (some who joined virtually from regions around Mexico) at a recent event focused on her book. “And probably more important, it’s the story of that cross-border counterinsurgency campaign that tried to stop them, but they were successful, and they incited the outbreak of the 1910 Mexican Revolution.”

The UCLA Center for Mexican Studies invited Lytle Hernández, who is the the Thomas E. Lifka Professor of History at UCLA, to speak with Fernando Pérez-Montesinos, assistant professor of history, who dove into why the historian chose to write about Mexican “reveltosos.”

“I’m a border-lander,” said Lytle Hernández, who recalls being alarmed that she was only just learning about the magonistas and their rebel movement as a doctoral student at UCLA. She recognized the importance of their place in American history and was concerned that people currently living in the borderlands — generally people of color, laborers and organizers — didn’t know these stories.

The book’s origin story comes from Lytle Hernández’s previous book, “City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965,” which was a compelling account that places contemporary issues of mass incarceration and mass deportation within a much broader historical context.

Using archival evidence, Lytle Hernández established that Los Angeles — “a hub of incarceration” that imprisons more people than any other city in the country that imprisons the most people in the world — has been the site of various manifestations of human caging. In documenting how this reality is inextricably bound to conquest, settler colonialism, institutional racism and structural assaults on the working poor, irrespective of race or ethnicity, Lytle Hernández had all the research and material she needed to write “Bad Mexicans.”

While “Bad Mexicans” arose from a personal place for Lytle Hernández, she says the book also served as a response to politics at the time of the project’s genesis. More specifically, the 2016 presidential debate, when former president Donald Trump famously referred to Mexican immigrants as “bad hombres” while speaking about his plan for a southern border wall.

“When Trump made his disparaging remarks about Mexican migrants who are doing nothing but trying to secure a better life for themselves, he was stirring up that rhetorical pot of racial violence,” said Lytle Hernández, who is also the director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies.

The historian chose “Bad Mexicans” as the title of her book, playing off Trump’s remark in hope that the general public would understand that by using that kind of language, the former president was setting the stage for anti-Mexican and anti-Latino racial violence.

To connect the reader to a form of racial violence they might be familiar with, Lytle Hernández opens the book with the scene of the 1910 lynching of Antonio Rodríguez in Texas.

“They lit the pyre and watched him burn,” said Lytle Hernández, reciting the first sentence of her book to show how the scene is used as an “anchor” for American readers. She hopes readers use what they know about lynching to make the connections to Mexican themes and experiences and their important place in the “American story,” she said.

The story goes on to use a Hollywood-like approach to smuggle in Mexican history; including armed battles, deciphering of secret codes, betrayals and love affairs. In doing so, Lytle Hernández says that “Bad Mexicans” rebuilds the legacy of Mexican and Mexican American identity in the country’s canon of history.

“Where do Mexicans fit in the U.S. racial dynamics?” said Lytle Hernández. “That has been a contest around whiteness and non-whiteness in particular.”

At the heart of the book, Lytle Hernández invites further conversations on race formations in the U.S., which she says have been largely defined by struggles over land and politics.

“What is the relationship of Mexicanas to Black folks? To Indigenous folks? Where are they going to fall in this historical set of relationships and power?” she said.

Despite the book being published in May, the discussion was particularly relevant because of the recent outcry in Los Angeles over racist comments made by three Latino city council members.

“This crisis is an opportunity for people to get really clear about where they stand in relationship to capitalism and white supremacy, among other things,” said Lytle Hernández, tying the recent politics back to the topics her book engages with.

The second half of the discussion, which was followed by an audience Q&A, explored the history of relations between Blacks and Latinos, focusing on connections between the Black freedom struggle and the suppression of Mexican radicals like the magonistas.

“We share a history. We share a story and no one ever wants to tell us about it,” Lytle Hernández said. “That’s the power of our amnesia, of our forgetting, is that we struggled to build community today because we don’t know how we built it in the past.”

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

Image of Manuscript of religious commentary. In this image, al-Taftāzānī’s sharḥ (commentary) on al-Nasafī’s al-ʿAqāʾid al-Nasafīyya (the creed of an-Nasafī) can be seen within the textblock. In the marginalia and between the text, glosses on this commentary and intertextual references by several different scholars can be found.

Students make remarkable finds in UCLA’s ‘Encountering Arabic Manuscripts’ course

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The collaboration between the Islamic studies program and UCLA Library continues to enrich the field and the world
Image of Manuscript of religious commentary. In this image, al-Taftāzānī’s sharḥ (commentary) on al-Nasafī’s al-ʿAqāʾid al-Nasafīyya (the creed of an-Nasafī) can be seen within the textblock. In the marginalia and between the text, glosses on this commentary and intertextual references by several different scholars can be found.

Scholars’ notes surround a central box containing a 14th-century Persian scholar’s commentary on a 12th-century Islamic religious tract. | UCLA Library Special Collections

Jonathan Riggs | 

If there was any question that UCLA Library Special Collections’ vast array of handwritten medieval manuscripts in Arabic, Persian and early Ottoman Turkish contained undiscovered historical gems and unique avenues for groundbreaking research, just ask doctoral student Brooke Baker.

While studying an untitled text as part of UCLA’s “Encountering Arabic Manuscripts” course, Baker found that it contained a work by Abd al-Wahhab al-Sha’rani, the 16th-century mystic and scholar who founded an Egyptian order of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam. Thinking she might have stumbled onto something rare, she showed it to Associate Professor Luke Yarbrough, who teaches the course.

“On a hunch, Brooke and I shared this discovery with Adam Sabra, the King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud Chair in Islamic Studies at UC Santa Barbara, who has worked extensively on Sha’rani,” Yarbrough recalled. The verdict? “He knew of only three other manuscripts of this type in the world — two in Egypt and one in Saudi Arabia — and was unaware of UCLA’s.”

This remarkable discovery is just one of several that have been made in the course, an ongoing collaboration between UCLA’s Islamic studies program and UCLA Library. Library Special Collections, which houses a world-class assortment of archives, books, manuscripts, photographs and other materials available to students, faculty and the public, provides an invaluable resource for such partnerships.

“The UCLA Library’s Middle Eastern and Islamic manuscripts collection is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world, totaling at least 8,000 manuscripts,” said Ginny Steel, UCLA’s Norman and Armena Powell University Librarian. “These collections encompass rare and beautiful illuminated manuscripts, poetry and literature, significant medical and scientific tracts, and works of historical importance.”

Images of Luke Yarbrough, Jet Jacobs and Ginny Steel

From left: Luke Yarbrough, Jet Jacobs and Ginny Steel. | Smadar Bergman and Elena Zhukova

The course itself began with a conversation between Yarbrough, who studies early and medieval Islamic history, and Jet Jacobs, the head of public services, outreach and community engagement for Library Special Collections.

“Since 2018, Library Special Collections has taught or facilitated over 300 classes using our materials. This means more than 10,000 students have interacted with over 25,000 rare and unique items, leading to a number of discoveries and research pathways,” Jacobs said. “The majority of these were undergraduate classes; it’s important to embed primary-source literacy into the undergraduate curriculum so that students feel empowered to conduct original research and envision themselves as knowledge creators.”

Although Library Special Collections works with faculty across campus, supporting classes in history, English, science, dance, studio art and beyond, this particular collaboration was sparked in part by the fact that the Middle Eastern and Islamic manuscripts collection has not yet been extensively catalogued — a remarkable opportunity for students and faculty to plumb its unknown depths.

Image of baker stamps - Russian stamps indicating the provenance of the paper used for a copy of a work by the 16th-century Sufi ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī.

Russian stamps indicating the provenance of the paper used for a copy of a work by the 16th-century Sufi ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī. | UCLA Library Special Collections

Beyond the wealth of knowledge available in each manuscript, many offer intriguing windows into the past. Marginal annotations, personal notes and even stamps from libraries across the centuries give invaluable insight to those seeking to understand specific works in their full context. Using such clues, another doctoral student in Yarbrough’s course, Hinesh Shah, was able to identify a manuscript as having belonged to specific officials of the 18th-century Mughal Empire of South Asia.

► Discover more about the unique finds by Baker, Shah and other students in the course

In fact, this research is so promising that an anonymous donor recently gave UCLA a $100,000 gift to support the preservation, cataloging and accessibility of the manuscript collection for anyone wishing to explore it. In particular, the gift will allow graduate students to further expand their cataloguing work.

“This collaboration benefits us all — we rely completely on Library Special Collections for their archival and preservation expertise, while the scholarly community can help make meaning out of the collections,” said Yarbrough. “Another important piece of the puzzle comes with members of the broader L.A. community who are interested in these manuscripts for what they represent religiously and culturally.”

After all, connecting the world with UCLA’s research and resources underpins the course, the collaboration and the work of Library Special Collections and the Islamic studies program.

“There is no end to the potential of Library Special Collections materials to encourage new areas of research and stimulate curiosity,” Jacobs said. “Our holdings consist of everything from stone tablets and medieval manuscripts to born-digital resources and contemporary artists’ books, and we are always looking for opportunities to engage our communities with these significant cultural heritage materials.”

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

UCLA

$1.2 million from Kachigian family trust establishes UCLA lectureship in Armenian studies

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Armenian language scholar Hagop Kouloujian has been appointed to the position for a five-year term
Black-and-white portraits of Kachigian siblings

Left to right: Siblings George, Alice and Harold Kachigian | UCLA

Jonathan Riggs | July 21, 2022

Key takeaways:
   • Late siblings George and Alice Kachigian were longtime supporters of  Armenian scholarship at UCLA.
   • The inaugural lectureship holder, Hagop Kouloujian, seeks to revive Western Armenian by having students compose creative works in the endangered language.

The UCLA Division of Humanities has received a $1.2 million bequest from the estate of siblings George and Alice Kachigian to support the Armenian studies program in the department of Near Eastern languages and cultures. As part of the gift, the department created the Kachigian Family Lectureship in Armenian Language and Culture.

The inaugural holder of the lectureship will be Hagop Kouloujian, a UCLA scholar and instructor who specializes in Western Armenian, a language that since the Armenian Genocide of the early 20th century has been spoken almost exclusively by people in the diaspora. Kouloujian was instrumental in having it designated an endangered language by UNESCO in 2010.

“We are grateful for the kindness and visionary support of the Kachigian family,” said David Schaberg, dean of humanities and senior dean of the UCLA College. “Their generosity will contribute to the vitality of this endangered language and culture.”

Los Angeles, with the largest Armenian-speaking population outside Armenia itself, and UCLA are natural settings for such scholarship. Since the launch of the Armenian studies program in 1969, UCLA has been a destination for students interested in the field, and the creation of the UCLA Promise Armenian Institute in 2019 cemented the university’s leadership role in Armenian research and public impact programs.

Image of Hagop Kouloujian, UCLA’s inaugural Kachigian Family Lecturer in Armenian Language and Culture

Hagop Kouloujian, UCLA’s inaugural Kachigian Family Lecturer in Armenian Language and Culture | Courtesy of Hagop Kouloujian

Kouloujian’s ongoing Language in Action project at UCLA, funded by the Portugal-based Calouse Gulbenkian Foundation, exemplifies his “creative literacy” approach, which focuses on teaching students by encouraging their own creative output. His students have produced hundreds of pieces, ranging from creative works to nonfiction, with the goal of contributing to the vitality of Western Armenian language and culture.

In May 2022, for example, the department of Near Eastern languages and cultures held an event to celebrate the publication of “Girkov useloo, inchoo hos em?” (“To Say With Passion, Why Am I Here?”), a full-length volume of poetry written in Western Armenian by the late Tenny Arlen, a 2013 UCLA comparative literature graduate who learned the language and wrote most of the collection in Kouloujian’s courses.

Donors George and Alice Kachigian, for whom the lectureship is named, were active members and generous supporters of the Los Angeles Armenian community. Although they moved to Oregon 30 years ago following the deaths of their parents and brother Harold, they continued to support UCLA’s Armenian studies program throughout their lives, providing research funding for faculty in the divisions of social sciences and humanities.

Alice died in 2017, and after George’s death in 2019, the siblings’ estate left generous funding to the Armenian studies program and the department of neurology at UCLA.

“The Kachigian family were friends to all, donated to many causes and counseled anyone who requested their help. They lived lives of goodness and kindness,” said Rafe Aharonian, trustee of the Kachigian Living Trust. “George, Alice and Harold wanted to help the youth learn more about Armenian heritage, and courses like Dr. Kouloujian’s encourage connections between UCLA students of Armenian heritage who might otherwise not have met.”

The Kachigians’ legacy will live on in all those at UCLA and elsewhere who, through the family’s generosity, have developed a deep connection to and appreciation for Armenian culture and language, said Kouloujian, who will hold the lectureship for five years.

“My aspiration for this lectureship is to continue to enhance UCLA’s Armenian work with forward-looking activities and community impact projects that will help invigorate the future of this language and culture,” he said. “I want to share the enduring, evolving beauty and power of Armenian with as many people as possible.”

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

Darnell Hunt named executive vice chancellor and provost

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The longtime campus leader will become UCLA’s chief academic officer effective Sept. 1
Portrait of Darnell Hunt

Darnell Hunt, professor of sociology and African American studies, and as of Sept. 1, 2022, UCLA executive vice chancellor and provost. © Alyssa Bierce/UCLA

UCLA Newsroom | 

Darnell Hunt, the dean of the division of social sciences and a professor of sociology and African American studies, has been appointed UCLA’s next executive vice chancellor and provost.

“A longtime campus leader widely respected for his vision, diligence, fairness and commitment to inclusive excellence, Dean Hunt will bring considerable skills, knowledge and experience to his new role as UCLA’s chief academic officer,” Chancellor Gene Block said in a message to campus. “I am certain that his service will continue to elevate our great institution.”

Hunt, who will begin in his new role on Sept. 1, has been a leading figure on campus for more than two decades. After beginning his academic career on the sociology faculty at USC, he joined UCLA in 2001 as a professor of sociology and director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. He led the Bunche Center from 2001 to 2017, and additionally served as chair of the sociology department from 2015 to 2017, before being named dean of the division of social sciences in the UCLA College.

As dean for the past five years, he has focused on supporting and elevating the social sciences and extending their reach across the academy and into the community.

Under his leadership, the social sciences division:

• expanded and continued to diversify its world-class faculty;

• established the Barbra Streisand Center for the Future of Women;

• created the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute;

• renamed the Downtown Labor Center after UCLA lecturer, civil rights icon and UCLA Medal recipient Rev. James Lawson Jr.;

• launched the “Big Data” and Society initiative and LA Social Science, an interactive forum designed to showcase research and engaged scholarship;

• secured a multi-year grant from the Mellon Foundation to support hiring and curricula with a focus on social justice, which was accomplished in conjunction with the division of humanities.

“Inclusive excellence and engaged scholarship are more than mere buzzwords,” Hunt said. “As EVCP, I look forward to working with campus leadership and our broader intellectual community to elevate these longstanding ideals at UCLA in concrete ways. By doing so, I know we can build on UCLA’s extraordinary contributions as one of the world’s great public research universities.”

Hunt earned his A.B. in journalism at the University of Southern California, his M.B.A. at Georgetown University, and his master of arts and doctorate in sociology at UCLA.

He has written extensively about issues related to race, media and culture, including four books and numerous articles for academic journals and news outlets. While his research expertise is wide ranging, he has developed a particular focus on issues of access and diversity in the entertainment industry. Since 2014, he has been the lead author of UCLA’s influential Hollywood Diversity Report, providing comprehensive analyses of the employment of women and people of color in front of and behind the camera in film and television.

A sought-after commentator in news media on questions of media and race, he has also served on panel discussions sponsored by the Federal Communications Commission, the United Nations, the Congressional Black Caucus, numerous colleges and universities and other organizations. The findings of his research studies have been reported in thousands of print, radio, broadcast and online media outlets throughout the United States and abroad. In 2010, he was listed among Ebony magazine’s “Power 150 Academia” for his community-engaged scholarship.

Hunt is a member of the American Sociological Association, the Association of Black Sociologists and the Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences. He has served as a member of the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations Academic Advisory Board and as a staff researcher for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’ hearings on the 1992 Los Angeles civil disturbances.

He currently serves as a member of the Chancellor’s Council on the Arts, the campus IT steering committee and the Faculty Forward Initiative task force at UCLA, and is also a member of the UC Press board of directors. In addition, he has served on numerous campus and UC committees including the committee on diversity and equal opportunity, the committee on undergraduate admissions and relations with schools, the classroom advisory committee, the civic engagement task force, and the UC Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, and was the recipient of the UCLA Academic Senate’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award in 2011.

In his announcement, Block thanked the committee members who conducted the search and he also shared his appreciation for Michael Levine for serving as the interim executive vice chancellor and provost since last October.

“Interim EVCP Levine took up this position during a challenging period, and through it all he has remained a dedicated steward of our academic enterprise,” Block said. Levine will return to his role as vice chancellor for academic personnel in September.

In closing Block expressed his optimism about UCLA’s future as Hunt prepares to become executive vice chancellor and provost.

“Given Dean Hunt’s UCLA roots, coupled with his administrative experience and compelling vision for UCLA, I am confident that he will provide extraordinary leadership in this new role,” Block said. “I greatly look forward to working with him and the campus community to advance our shared goals.”

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

iStock.com/globalmoments

Pregnant moms and depression: Study links rising symptoms to kids’ behavioral issues

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Stuart Wolpert | 

Children whose mothers experience rising levels of depression from the period before pregnancy until the months just after giving birth are at greater risk of developing emotional, social and academic problems during their youth, UCLA psychology researchers and colleagues report.

Their recently published seven-year study, which tracked mothers and their offspring from preconception until the children were 5 years old, is the first to demonstrate how changes in mothers’ level of depression over time may impact early childhood behavior and emotional well-being, the authors said.

“Our findings suggest that increases in mother’s symptoms of depression from preconception to postpartum contribute to children’s lower attention and behavioral control, which can raise the risk of problems across the life span,” said lead author Gabrielle Rinne, a UCLA psychology graduate student. “Parents should know, however, that this can be addressed through early childhood intervention.”

For the two-part study, the researchers first analyzed data on 362 women — most of whom were Black or Hispanic and from low-income backgrounds — collected as part of a study by the Community Child Health Network, a collaboration among health scientists from UCLA and other institutions, along with community partners, that investigated disparities in maternal and child health among poor and minority families.

The women, all of whom already had a young child, were followed through a subsequent pregnancy and were interviewed on four occasions about their symptoms of depression — once before becoming pregnant, twice during pregnancy and again approximately three months after their baby’s birth — with researchers tracking how these symptoms changed over time.

Just under 75% of the women reported low symptoms of depression that didn’t change over the study period, while 12% had low symptoms that significantly increased and 7% had persistently high symptoms.

For the second part of the study, the researchers followed 125 of these women several years later. When their children were 4, or preschool age, the mothers were asked to describe in detail their child’s temperament and behavior — particularly their experiences of emotional distress and their ability to regulate their emotions.

Illustration of blue and pink fishes swimming in opposite directions, used for the cognitive task.

The cognitive task required 5-year-olds to focus on the direction of fishes on a screen. (Image by Anat Prior)

Then, at age 5, the children performed a task requiring focused attention. Looking at an iPad screen showing a series of fish, they were asked to identify the direction the fish in the middle was facing while ignoring the direction of all the other fish. Higher scores on this task reflect a greater ability to concentrate and inhibit attention to surrounding stimuli, Rinne said.

Children of mothers whose depression had increased from preconception through the postpartum period performed significantly worse on the computer task than those whose mothers had reported consistently low symptoms of depression. Interestingly, there were no differences in performance between kids whose mothers had experienced consistently high depression and those whose mothers had consistently low depression.

The findings are published in the Journal of Affective Disorders (free access through June 15).

“This study suggests that a pattern of increasing depression may adversely affect children,” said senior author Christine Dunkel Schetter, a distinguished professor of psychology and psychiatry at UCLA who had a lead role in study design and in interview development. She noted that not all of these kids are destined to experience problems but emphasized that “they are at higher risk of socio-emotional and behavioral issues and problems at school.”

Children whose mothers consistently reported low symptoms of depression, she said, are not at risk.

“Moms who experience depression or stress at multiple times should know the effects this can have on young children,” Dunkel Schetter added. “They can seek evaluation and treatment from a doctor or mental health professional for their children and themselves.”

The importance of getting treatment for maternal depression

“The addition of a child to the family is a significant emotional and psychological adjustment that can involve both joy and distress,” Rinne said. “Maternal depression is one of the most common complications of pregnancy and postpartum.”

In Los Angeles County, she pointed out, estimates of depression during pregnancy and in new mothers range as high as 25%.

Image of Gabrielle Rinne, lead author and UCLA graduate student in psychology

Gabrielle Rinne, lead author and UCLA graduate student in psychology (Image by Danielle Hankinson)

The study’s findings, Rinne said, support “the importance of comprehensive mental health care at multiple periods of the reproductive life course,” beginning even before pregnancy and continuing afterward — especially for mothers who are feeling elevated level of distress at any point.

Los Angeles County resources for maternal mental health care in pregnancy are available here. If a mother is depressed but too busy to see a doctor or therapist, she may be able to find help through evidence-based apps online. Newer forms of digital mental health treatment can also be effective, Dunkel Schetter said.

Study co-authors include Elysia Poggi Davis of the University of Denver, Madeleine Shalowitz of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and Sharon Ramey of Virginia Tech. Nicole Mahrer, a former UCLA postdoctoral scholar and current assistant professor of psychology at the University of La Verne, and former UCLA postdoctoral scholar Christine Guardino who is now an assistant professor of psychology at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, assisted in the research.

The study, which was conducted prior to COVID-19, concluded in 2019. It was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Institute for Nursing Research, both part of the National Institutes of Health.

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

Brookhaven National Laboratory/DOE

UCLA, partners win Department of Energy grant to boost diversity in field of nuclear physics

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Image of the DOE’s new Electron-Ion Collider in New York

Trainees will have the unique opportunity to conduct research related to the DOE’s new Electron-Ion Collider in New York (pictured), where scientists hope to determine the structure of quarks and gluons, the building blocks of matter. Image credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory/DOE

By Stuart Wolpert

The UCLA Department of Physics and Astronomy has received federal government funding for a pilot program designed to help low-income, first-generation and historically underrepresented undergraduate students from across California pursue graduate degrees and careers in nuclear physics, with the aim of increasing the diversity of scientists in this field.

The $500,000 grant from the nuclear physics program in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science will support training, mentorship and hands-on research experiences for students, including internships at national laboratories and the opportunity to work on research related to the DOE’s cutting-edge Electron-Ion Collider, said associate professor of physics Zhongbo Kang, who is heading the program at UCLA.

The grant-funded program is a collaboration among UCLA, UC Riverside, the Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories, Cal Poly Pomona and the Cal-Bridge program, a statewide network of nine UC, 23 CSU and more than 110 community college campuses that seeks to create greater opportunities for underrepresented minorities in STEM fields. The undergraduate trainees are selected through Cal-Bridge.

Associate professor of physics Zhongbo Kang, who is heading the grant-funded program at UCLA and coordinating trainees’ work on the Electron-Ion Collider. Image Courtesy of Zhongbo Kang

“The UC and CSU systems are among the largest engines for social mobility in the United States and play a key role in providing opportunities to students from disadvantaged backgrounds,” said Kang, who is a member of both the Mani L. Bhaumik Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Center for Quantum Science and Engineering at UCLA. “Their student bodies contain the largest pool of low-income, first-generation and underrepresented minority students in the nation, and we are in an excellent position to tap into this pool and broaden the nuclear physics pipeline.”

During each year of the two-year program, four trainees will join research groups at UCLA or UC Riverside and will intern for 10 weeks during the summer at either Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory or Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. At UCLA, the nuclear physics group conducts theoretical research under Kang’s leadership and experimental research under professor of physics Huan Huang. Trainees will be integrated into one of these groups based on their research interests and will work with the professors and a team of undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral scholars and staff scientists.

DOE’s Electron-Ion Collider: The future of nuclear physics

The chance to conduct research related to the nascent Electron-Ion Collider, or EIC — the DOE’s flagship research project for the future of nuclear physics — is a one-of-a-kind opportunity for the trainees, Kang said, and he hopes the experience will help them see themselves as members of the EIC community. The massive facility, to be built on Long Island, New York, will use electron collisions with protons and atomic nuclei to produce images of quarks and gluons — the elementary building blocks of matter. In California, scientists will be working on the physics undergirding the collider and developing the facility’s detectors. The next few years will be a critical period for the design of the detectors.

“Given that the EIC experiments will likely start in about 10 years and run until mid-century, the students will see that they could become deeply ingrained with the project,” said Kang, who will coordinate the EIC research training programs with the California EIC consortium. “Our goal is to establish a Ph.D. bridge to the EIC program by training a cohort of students from diverse backgrounds that will be in an excellent potion to apply to graduate school. The EIC project provides an excellent platform for training the next generation of scientists.”

The undergraduate trainees will present their research results at conferences and participate in the meetings and workshops of the American Physical Society’s Division of Nuclear Physics and the California EIC consortium. They will learn to work effectively on large research projects, communicate results to other scientists and general audiences, learn software skills to run large-scale physics simulations and develop technical expertise in data science and machine learning.

The first trainees began the program this month. The $500,000 grant is part a larger, $3 million DOE effort to broaden and diversify nuclear and particle physics through research traineeships for undergraduates.

“The ability to fulfill our mission to discover, explore and understand all forms of nuclear matter relies on the availability of a highly trained, diverse community of investigators, researchers, students and staff,” said Timothy Hallman, the DOE’s associate director of science for nuclear physics. “The goal of this program is to help broaden and diversity this community to ensure that it is drawn from the broadest possible pool of potential nuclear and particle physicists within the U.S.”

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

Image of Farwiza Farhan with baby elephantCourtesy of Farwiza Farhan

Farwiza Farhan wins UCLA’s Pritzker Award for environmental innovators

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By David Colgan

Conservationist receives $100,000 for work to protect Indonesia’s species-rich Leuser Ecosystem

Image of Farwiza Farhan with baby elephant

Farhan works to protect the Leuser Ecosystem, the last place on Earth where tigers, elephants, rhinos and orangutans live together in the wild. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Farwiza Farhan

The UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability presented the 2021 Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award to Farwiza Farhan, who seeks to conserve wildlife in ways that also sustain humans living on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Farhan was honored during an online ceremony on Nov. 18.

Farhan works with communities and courts to protect the Leuser Ecosystem — the last place on Earth where tigers, elephants, rhinos and orangutans live together in the wild. She founded and leads a nonprofit organization called HAkA. The name stands for Hutan, Alam dan Lingkungan Aceh, or Forest, Nature and Environment of Aceh; its goal is to ensure sustainable development plans serve humans and wildlife in Indonesia’s Aceh province.

“My desire to protect the forest initially comes from my love of wildlife, but the force that keeps me going is the strength of the people I work with,” Farhan said.

The Pritzker award, which is presented annually, carries a prize of $100,000 that is funded through a portion of a $20 million gift to UCLA from the Anthony and Jeanne Pritzker Family Foundation. It is the field’s first major honor specifically for innovators under the age of 40 — those whose work stands to benefit most from the prize money and the prestige it conveys.

Farhan, 35, fights ecological threats with teams who spend time living among communities around the Leuser Ecosystem to better understand their needs. Recently, she mobilized community leaders in the region to file a civil lawsuit against a development plan that could legitimize road and hydropower schemes, rights to farm oil palm trees and new settlements in the ecosystem.

She also oversees a team that patrols and intercepts would-be wildlife poachers. Since it began, the group has reduced poaching in the region by 95%.

The Pritzker Award is open to anyone working to solve environmental challenges through any lens — from science to advocacy to entrepreneurism. There were three finalists for the 2021 prize, and all are focused on regional or local challenges.

The other finalists were David Diaz, an advocate for active transportation and environmental health in California’s San Gabriel Valley, and Chook-Chook Hillman, who brings traditional Karuk tribal perspectives to bear on ecological problems in the Klamath River basin in Northern California and Oregon. A panel of UCLA faculty members selected the finalists from among 18 candidates who were nominated by an international group of environmental leaders.

Image of Farwiza Farhan in the field, holding binoculars

Farhan is the founder of HAkA, an organization dedicated to ensuring that sustainable development plans serve humans and wildlife in Indonesia’s Aceh province. Photo credit: Courtesy of Farwiza Farhan

Farhan was chosen as the 2021 honoree by a panel of five distinguished judges: Kara Hurst, head of worldwide sustainability at Amazon; Anousheh Ansari, CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation; Chanell Fletcher, executive officer of environmental justice at the California Air Resources Board; Los Angeles City Council member Kevin De Léon; and Lori Garver, CEO of the philanthropic organization Earthrise Alliance.

“Today we are in the midst of an existential crisis that human beings have never experienced before,” De Léon said in a video message to Farhan. “Your work as a researcher and forest conservationist is crucial to reversing the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss.”

The announcement of Farhan as the winner was made by Tony Pritzker, who founded the award and is a member of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability’s advisory board.

“Congratulations to David, Farwiza and Chook-Chook for having the courage to lead your communities and the next generation of environmental leaders,” Pritzker said.

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

Barbra Streisand to fund forward-looking institute at UCLA focused on solving societal challenges

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Picture of Barbra Streisand

Courtesy of Barbra Streisand

“Building upon her decades of work as an artist and activist, Barbra Streisand’s visionary act of generosity will enable UCLA scholars from many different fields to collaborate on research that will move society forward,” UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said.

The Barbra Streisand Institute includes 4 research centers that address her concerns:

the Center for Truth in the Public Sphere
the Center for the Impact of Climate Change
the Center for the Dynamics of Intimacy & Power Between Women & Men
the Center for the Impact of Art on the Culture

These centers will be housed in UCLA’s Division of Social Sciences.

Widely recognized as an icon in multiple entertainment fields, Streisand has attained unprecedented success as a recording artist, actor, director, producer, screenwriter, author and songwriter. She is the first woman to direct, produce, write and star in a major motion picture, the first woman composer to receive an Academy Award, the only recording artist who has achieved No. 1 albums in six consecutive decades, and the first woman to receive a Golden Globe Award for Best Director.

Alongside these achievements, Streisand has long been a staunch supporter of civil rights, gender equality, and upholding democracy. She has also been a leading environmental activist, funding some of the earliest climate change research at the Environmental Defense Fund beginning in 1989.

“It is my great pleasure to be able to fund an institute at UCLA, one of the world’s premier universities,” Streisand said. “This will be a place where future scholars can discuss, engage and argue about the most important issues of the day; where innovators will speak truth to power, help save our planet, and make glass ceilings for women an anachronism; and in the process give us a chance to have a brighter, more promising future.”

Streisand has been awarded two Oscars, five Emmys, 10 Grammys including the Legend Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award, a Tony Award, 11 Golden Globes including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and two Best Picture Awards for “Yentl” and “A Star Is Born,” three Peabody Awards, and the Director’s Guild Award for her concert special — the only artist to receive honors in all of those areas. Streisand also received the National Medal of Arts, the highest honor given to artists by the U.S. government, as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

A devoted philanthropist, Streisand has supported cardiovascular research and education at Cedars-Sinai since 2007, and in 2012, the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai was renamed in her honor.

Streisand also established the Streisand Chair in Cardiology at UCLA in 1984. In 2014, the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Health Program was established at the university, where the latest research examines stress and the connection between the heart and the mind.

“The future Barbra Streisand Institute will bring to bear the full range of UCLA’s social sciences expertise on the most pressing societal issues of the day, guiding policy and informing solutions to benefit all,” said Darnell Hunt, dean of social sciences in the UCLA College.

Ahead of the formal establishment of the institute, which will occur when the full gift amount is received, the work will be housed at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women. The center is internationally renowned for research in areas including women’s empowerment, environmental sustainability, women’s health, public policy and politics, and arts, culture and narrative storytelling. Streisand’s gift extends the center’s robust research on critical issues that affect women and society overall.

“This incredible gift will have an impact on our university for generations, and it is an auspicious moment for us to mark the second century for UCLA,” said Dr. Eric Esrailian, UCLA faculty member, co-chair of the UCLA Second Century Council and longtime friend of Streisand who will be collaborating on programming for the Barbra Streisand Institute.

The first area of study and advocacy will focus on truth in the public sphere, a subject which Streisand is especially passionate about. Speakers and research will delve into urgent and existential threats to democracy, and examine how lies and the proliferation of disinformation can destroy a civic sense of decency, as well as entire countries.

Streisand says, “While it’s easy to reflect on the past, I can’t stop thinking about the future and what it holds for our children, our planet and our society. The Barbra Streisand Institute at UCLA will be an exploration into vital issues that affect us all…and the fact that my father, Emanuel Streisand, was an educator makes this Institute even more meaningful to me.”

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.