Archive for category: Social Sciences

You are here: Home / Research / Social Sciences
Shirlee Smith, UCLA alumna and creator of Black Boyle Heights Facebook group

UCLA alumna seeks to preserve history of Black Boyle Heights

/in , , /by

Shirlee Smith wants you to know about the Black community that used to live in the neighborhood: ‘We were there.’

Shirlee Smith, UCLA alumna and creator of Black Boyle Heights Facebook group

Shirlee Smith wrote a book about parenting titled “They’re Your Kids, Not Your Friends.” | Courtesy of Shirlee Smith

Nancy Gondo | November 7, 2022

Though Boyle Heights has a storied history as a multi-ethnic enclave of the 20th century, Shirlee Smith has noticed the Black community there often gets overlooked — something the UCLA alumna hopes to change.

“I’ve spent my adult years closing gaping mouths when asked where I’d grown up and my reply was Boyle Heights,” said Smith, 85. “People saw Boyle Heights as Jewish, as Latina, as Japanese. And so, the feedback has been, ‘Oh yes, the world needs to know: We were there.’”

The former Boyle Heights resident is working on a project to document and preserve the history of the Black people who used to live in the neighborhood. In some ways, Smith’s mother had started the legwork by collecting stories from families and entrusting them to one of her granddaughters.

“I read the 20 or so masterpieces and knew our stories had to be brought to light,” Smith said. She published some of the stories in Brooklyn and Boyle magazine, started the Black Boyle Heights Facebook group and in February, organized a virtual event with more than 50 people gathered online to share memories and honor their elders.

‘I’ll Take You There’

The event, called “I’ll Take You There,” honored four former residents who ranged in age from 93 to 101. Smith plans to turn the event into an annual celebration. She’s also collecting photos and stories, locating people, reviewing census data and getting in touch with local historians. Black Boyle Heights’ goals include publishing a directory of where the Black residents lived, setting up a podcast to tell their stories and creating a museum exhibit.

Boyle Heights drew a diverse mix of people in the early 20th century because the neighborhood east of the Los Angeles River was one of the few without restrictive racial covenants. Smith remembers hearing mariachi music up and down the block and walking past the Japanese Baptist church at the intersection of Evergreen and 2nd Street.

She didn’t think much about the diversity of Boyle Heights as a kid. But “as I grew up and interacted with a wide range of people, I discovered that fond memories were the opportunity to know up close people from so many cultures and be part of their traditions,” Smith said.

The close-knit Black community provided a built-in value system. Her next-door neighbor taught her how to knit and embroider; hairdresser Dolores Jones made house calls with straightening combs and curling irons in hand; Daddy Fred and Ma’ Bessie helped watch the neighborhood kids. But if anyone was caught acting out of line, word spread quickly.

“When you did wrong, it wasn’t just that Shirlee Pickett did wrong. It was the Pickett family,” Smith, née Pickett, said. “So when Dolores Jones came to your house to do your hair, you had to be polite. You may not have wanted to get your hair done, but you had to appreciate her.”

The neighborhood makeup started to change in the back half of the 1900s as racial covenants in Los Angeles lifted and families moved out of Boyle Heights. Today, few Black families remain in the now predominantly Latino neighborhood.

Meeting UCLA

Most minority students in Boyle Heights at the time weren’t being prepped for college, according to Smith. There were four paths, called “tracking” — academic, commercial, shop and home economics. Black and Latino girls were often tracked into home economics and commercial, where they would learn how to file papers. Few were put on the academic track.

“UCLA was not on my menu — there was no history,” Smith said. But in 1969, UCLA established the high potential program (now part of the Academic Advancement Program) to identify Black and Chicano students who might not meet the general entry criteria but are likely to succeed at the university. She applied and was accepted. “And that’s how I met UCLA,” she said.

The program started with a year of preparing students for university life. Smith wasn’t your typical college student fresh out of high school. She was a single mother of five children ranging in age from 7 months to 11 years.

“I was 30 years old when I hit the campus, and I had my youngest child in a stroller,” Smith said. “I took her to class with me, and that did not happen in 1968. There was no old lady on campus with a baby.”

As if that wasn’t tough enough, she got a C- on the first paper she wrote. She went to see the instructor, who told her she could redo the paper and gave her a copy of an A+ paper. That was a pivotal learning moment — Smith went on to graduate in 1973 with the distinction Department Scholar in Sociology.

Smith has since worked as a columnist for the Pasadena Star News, produced and hosted a cable TV show and written a book about parenting.

“Without UCLA, I doubt seriously that I would have had the courage to pursue any of my many accomplishments,” she said. “It’s really the reason I became a writer.”

If you’d like to contact Shirlee Smith regarding the Black Boyle Heights project:
info@blackboyleheights.org
aanbh1896@gmail.com
(626) 296-2777

This article originally appeared in the 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

/in , , , /by

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.

Inaugural faculty recipients of Mellon Foundation “Data, Justice and Society” grants

/in , , , , , , /by
Collage image of UCLA professors David MacFadyen, Davide Panagia, Miriam Posner, Nick Shapiro and Veronica Terriquez, recipients of the inaugural “Data, Justice and Society” course development grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

From left to right: UCLA professors David MacFadyen, Davide Panagia, Miriam Posner, Nick Shapiro and Veronica Terriquez, recipients of the inaugural “Data, Justice and Society” course development grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

By Munia Bhaumik

The following UCLA faculty members are the inaugural recipients of “Data, Justice and Society” course development grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation:

This remarkable cohort of innovative UCLA faculty proposed to develop courses across the humanities, social sciences and life sciences to enhance teaching at the intersection of data, justice and society and to augment curricular offerings engaged with data ethics and justice, community-engaged teaching and digital humanities. These courses will be offered either this academic year or next.

The courses enrich our understanding of how data technologies are increasingly a part of our everyday lives. When you buy something on Amazon, friend someone on Facebook or search on Google, data is being gathered about your choices. These courses mobilize the space of the classroom at the nation’s top public university to invite conversation and thought about social consequences and the need for justice in our data-saturated world.

Thanks to the generous contribution of the Mellon Foundation, these grants are increasing the number of course offerings across the UCLA campus for both graduate and undergraduate students to learn from professors who are working at the intersection of multiple fields. Many of the new courses will also allow students to engage with and learn from community organizations across Southern California.

The faculty grant recipients are not only world-renowned scholars in their respective fields, but also committed instructors eager to engage students around issues of academic and social relevance. They were selected by the Mellon Social Justice Curricular Initiatives steering committee, comprised of Todd Presner, professor and chair of the department of European languages and transcultural studies; Shalom Staub, director of the Center for Community Engagement; Juliet Williams, professor and chair of the social science interdepartmental program; and Munia Bhaumik, program director of Mellon Social Justice Curricular Initiatives.


Course Descriptions

David MacFadyen
“Freedom of Speech in Russia: Decentralized Tools for Musicians and Journalists”
Goal: To create a blockchain-based and anonymized publishing platform, using NFTs to protect the rights of both journalists and musicians, currently under significant pressure from state censorship during the war with Ukraine.

Davide Panagia
“#datapolitik: or, the Political Theory of Data”
This course looks to the changing nature of political thinking and judgment given the emergence of data and algorithms as the principal media in contemporary democratic life. The course introduces students to developments of new forms of critical thinking for the study of data and society by interrogating familiar concepts in the history of political thought (freedom, justice, equality, race, ethnicity, gender) in relationship to new and emerging media, and the expectations and claims these media place on users. The learning objective of the course is to study political ideas in relationship to, and embedded with, the specific medium of data.

Miriam Posner
“Data from the Margins”
Data has a long tradition as a weapon of discrimination — but oppressed communities have an equally long tradition of reconceiving, reworking and remaking data in order to fight back. We’ll consult with and hear from activists and scholars who are making change for their communities as they challenge everyone to rethink what data can do.

Nick Shapiro
“Science, Mass Incarceration and Accountability”
The course will be split into two complementary halves. First, an introduction to the extractive data practices of science that have both advanced and profited off of mass incarceration. This half of the course will facilitate the subject matter expertise needed to understand the context and critiques that the work of the second half of the course is attempting to overcome or counteract. The topics of the first half will include a general introduction to mass incarceration and what data can and can’t tell us about this archipelago of nearly 7,000 carceral facilities as well as the unethical scientific knowledge extraction from incarcerated people.

Veronica Terriquez
“Community-Engaged Research Methods:  Surveying Racially Diverse Youth and Workers”
This course will train students in designing, drafting, piloting, and administering a new survey focused on transitions to adulthood. Written in collaboration with community partners, this survey will gather data on the workforce development, labor rights, education, health, mental health, and civic engagement of young people residing in BIPOC communities disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The course will expose students to the historical development of racial statistics, the role of racial statistics in contemporary life, and critical quantitative science. It will also include testing questions on racial identity and attitudes; gender identity; workforce development; labor rights; healing and wellness; and other topics determined by community partners serving Latinx, AAPI, Black, and Indigenous youth. Additionally, students will learn about the strengths and weaknesses of different survey sampling methodologies aimed at gathering data from BIPOC youth, low-wage workers, and students.

Bridgerton cast photo

Women and people of color still less likely to helm big-budget TV shows

/in , , /by

Latest Hollywood Diversity Report from UCLA signals potential challenges ahead in writers’ rooms

Bridgerton cast photo

Netflix’s period romance “Bridgerton” enjoyed broad appeal among Asian, Black, Latino and white households in 2020–21; it also generated plenty of buzz on Instagram and Twitter. | Image credit: Netflix

Jessica Wolf | October 27, 2022

UCLA researchers see signs that could foretell a retreat in the industry’s gender and racial diversity — especially on big-budget shows and in writing positions.

That’s among the conclusions of a study of the 2020–21 TV season in the new Hollywood Diversity Report, which is produced by the Entertainment and Media Research Initiative at UCLA.

“The next few years may be a true test of whether Hollywood is truly committed to the changes they promised during the nation’s reckoning on race following the murder of George Floyd,” said Ana-Christina Ramón, director of the initiative.

The report did also find that shows with diverse casts — such as “FBI” on CBS, “Snowpiercer” on TNT and “Bridgerton” on Netflix — continued to draw large, diverse audiences.

But with programmers increasingly shelling out big bucks for high-concept shows, the UCLA report reveals that those opportunities weren’t equal for women and people of color — despite the fact there were more minority and women show creators across all distribution platforms than there were during the 2019–20 season.

“We saw an uptick in opportunity for people of color and women having their shows greenlit, which should be a marker of progress,” Ramón said. “However, when we examined the episodic budgets of all the TV series, we see a strong pattern indicating that shows created by people of color and women tended to receive smaller budgets than those created by white men, particularly in the digital arena.”

Nearly 1 in 2 shows for which white men were credited as show creators enjoyed a budget of more than $3 million per episode, but far fewer women or people of color reached that level.

In broadcast, 71.4% of show creators of color (both men and women) had per-episode budgets of less than $3 million; among white women creators, 86.9% did so; and among white men, just 58.5% worked with less than $3 million per-episode budgets. The discrepancies were similar for streaming and cable series.

Netflix’s “The Crown” and other high-profile projects continued to make streaming services the industry’s biggest-budget playground. There, too, white men show creators received the biggest sums for their projects.

Among streaming series, 21% of those created by white men enjoyed per-episode budgets of $7 million or more. Just 11.1% of streaming shows created by people of color had budgets in that range, and only 2.9% of shows created by white women did. (Disney+’s “WandaVision” was the lone member of that group.)

Overall, in the digital arena, a plurality of white women (42.9%) show creators had budgets between $3 million and $4.99 million; among people of color, the greatest number of show creators (66.6%) had budgets below $3 million per episode.

The report also tracks the gender and racial profile for those who held key jobs for 107 broadcast, 109 cable and 191 digital scripted shows from the 2020–21 season. Women made up 31.8% of show creators in broadcast, 31.2% in cable and 36.1% in digital. People of color held 13.1% percent of those roles in broadcast, 26.6% in cable, and 25.6% in digital. All six of those figures were improvements over the prior year, but they still fall short of proportionate representation for either group.

Darnell Hunt, UCLA’s executive vice chancellor and provost, and co-founder of the Hollywood Diversity Report, said there are ominous signs for the future of the industry’s diversity efforts.

“Diversity initiatives traditionally are the first to be sacrificed when there are economic downturns,” Hunt said. “We’re already seeing it start with cutbacks at Warner and HBO. But rolling back efforts before equity has been truly achieved for women and people of color would be a major miscalculation.

“Any cost-savings studios realize now will come at the expense of alienating increasingly diverse viewers who expect increased representation in their TV shows, and do not make good business sense in the long term.”

Over the course of 11 TV seasons, the report has repeatedly drawn correlations between shows’ ratings and the diversity of their casts and writers. For example, ratings in 2020–21 were highest for cable scripted shows with casts made up of at least 41% minority actors. In digital, ratings were highest for shows with casts that were 21% to 30% minorities.

Representation in writers’ rooms for both women and people of color improved in 2020–21. Women made up about 45% of writers, and minorities made up more than 30% of writers, both small increases from previous TV seasons.

But that progress could be tenuous given the TV industry’s continued shift to releasing more content on digital platforms, which typically have shorter seasons — and therefore fewer slots for all writers.

“Like other industry watchers, we are closely monitoring these trends and exploring what impact they might have on opportunities for women and people of color to tell authentic stories,” said Michael Tran, a UCLA graduate student studying sociology and a co-author of the report. “The racial and gender dynamics in a collaborative writers’ room have an enormous impact on the types of stories that are told.”

The Hollywood Diversity Report uses independently gathered information about the race, ethnicity and gender identity of actors, writers, directors and show creators. The Entertainment and Media Research Initiative, which was formed in September, is under the auspices of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. The initiative will expand UCLA’s study of the entertainment industry to explore equity and access issues affecting industry workers with other underrepresented identities — based on their disability status, sexual orientation and religion, and how those identities intersect with race, ethnicity and gender.

“With a continued focus on workers’ rights, we are currently working with partners to examine ways to gather information and uncover the experiences of those from other underrepresented communities that are often overlooked,” Ramón said.

Other findings from the new report:

• Diversity of TV casts continued to improve, extending a longstanding trend. In the 2020–21 season, 34.9% of broadcast, 35.8% of cable and 30.7% of digital featured majority-minority casts.
• Women were well represented in lead acting roles on scripted shows on cable, as well as on digital platforms.
• Actors of color were underrepresented in lead roles on broadcast TV (just 27.4%), but were nearly proportionally represented — relative to the U.S. population overall — in lead roles on cable (39.6%) and digital (37.6%).
• Women of color made gains as writers for broadcast shows, holding 17.8% in 2020-21, up from 13.6% in 2019-20.
• A higher percentage of TV directors were women of color than in the previous year, across all three platform types.
• Social media engagement was highest for digital shows that had diverse casts. Netflix’s “The Chair,” Disney+’s “Loki” and “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Netflix’s “Bridgerton,” Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” and HBO Max’s “Hacks” all generated major buzz on Instagram and Twitter.
• Transgender and nonbinary actors had nominal representation. The report tracked five transgender and two nonbinary actors in broadcast shows; three transgender and five nonbinary actors among cable TV casts. In digital, just one transgender and seven nonbinary actors appeared across all shows tracked.

Budget per episode of digital TV programs, segmented by race and gender of show creator; click each image for full description and download:

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

Alexandra Stern and Abel Valenzuela

UCLA College welcomes new deans Alexandra Minna Stern and Abel Valenzuela

/in , , , , , , /by
Photo illustration of Oleg Itskhoki surrounded by floating currencies

Oleg Itskhoki is a rising star in economics

/in , , , , , /by

Professor earlier this year won the John Bates Clark Medal, one of the most prestigious honors in his field

Oleg Itskhoki, UCLA’s Venu and Ana Kotamraju Professor of Economics, surrounded by floating currencies.

The John Bates Clark Medal committee honored Oleg Itskhoki for “his masterful application of empirical and theoretical tools” that offering insights into important phenomena in international economics. | UCLA

Jonathan Riggs | October 13, 2022

Why do nearly 80 countries choose to fully or partially peg their exchange rates against the U.S. dollar, and how much independence of their monetary policy do they give up by doing so?

Answers to queries like these can be elusive, whether you’re someone who feels like conversations about macroeconomics on the nightly news go over their head, or even an academic economist.

“Without having an empirically relevant model of exchange rates, it is impossible to credibly answer questions that concern, for example, the costs and benefits of common currency areas, such as the Euro Zone, which eliminate exchange rate fluctuations between their country-members,” said Oleg Itskhoki, UCLA’s Venu and Ana Kotamraju Professor of Economics. “Similarly, questions about the optimal exchange rate policy and the costs and benefits of partially managed exchange rates require such a theoretical framework as well.”

In new research, Itskhoki has developed new frameworks that will drive considerable thought in the field going forward. For these ideas, the 39-year-old whose research focuses on macroeconomics and international economics won the John Bates Clark Medal from the American Economic Association. The award is given to an economist under age 40 who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge.

“This is the first time a UCLA faculty member has won this prestigious award,” said Jinyong Hahn, chair of the economics department. “Oleg Itskhoki is a star in the field of international economics who solved important puzzles in exchange rates and made it possible to understand the relationship between foreign trade and income inequality.”

Although he hailed from a family of physicists and inherited the family interest in the field, Itskhoki was born in the Soviet Union and grew up during the turbulence of transition-era Russia, during which the legacy of government control over science cast a long shadow. Seeing his older sister’s success in the more stable field of economics, Itskhoki followed in her footsteps.

He appreciated the opportunity to delve into scientific work that left his professional options open, giving him the security of knowing his economics research qualified him for a broader scope of work outside of academia than high-level physics specialization might have. And the puzzles and problems inherent in international economics policies fascinated him more and more the deeper he got into exploring them — especially since the field granted him more independence to follow his curiosity than he might have as part of a lab with rigidly established priorities.

“I truly enjoyed the work and as I went through school, I found myself more and more absorbed by it,” said Itskhoki, who came from Princeton University to UCLA in 2019. “I still am today — I feel so lucky having made what feels like a hobby I love into my life.”

In the official award citation listing Itskhoki’s research highlights, the association emphasized his key insight that financial market noise, rather than economic fundamentals, may be the main driver of exchange rates. This idea offers a unifying theory that solves five of the field’s major exchange-rate puzzles and provides a framework that many believe will serve as the definitive lens through which economists examine these issues going forward.

“Through his masterful application of empirical and theoretical tools, Itskhoki has revisited classic questions in both international finance and international trade, resolving long-standing puzzles and offering new economic insights into important phenomena in international economics,” the committee concluded.

Although the Clark Medal does not include a monetary award, it reflects an enormous vote of confidence from the entire field of economics. The Clark Medal is considered second only to the Nobel Prize in terms of prestige and it has long served as a precursor to winning that honor as well. Earning such a visible sign of respect from his peers means a lot to Itskhoki.

“It’s completely crazy — these things don’t happen. Well, they happen to somebody, but you never expect it to be you,” Itskhoki said. “The biggest, most pleasant part of it all is hearing from so many people that they were teaching my papers — and enjoying teaching them! I am so grateful to hear my work is influential in some ways.”

Crediting his mentors, colleagues and predecessors in the field, Itskhoki chooses to view his victory as a communal rather than personal victory. (His family, including his sister who inspired his professional journey with her own, couldn’t be prouder, he said.) Itskhoki is especially delighted to see “UCLA” now appear among the home institutions of Clark Medal winners, a list which has long been dominated by schools like Harvard and MIT.

“UCLA is a very special place, where public service, research and teaching are deeply valued,” Itskhoki said. “I find that so inspiring, and I couldn’t be prouder to see schools like us and UC Berkeley coming into their own as top national institutions for economics.”

Teaching remains a passion for Itskhoki — in addition to doctoral courses in macroeconomics at both the national and international level, Itskhoki also teaches an international finance course for third- and fourth-year undergraduates.

“Economics are in the news every day — for example, they were a big part of the COVID crisis conversation — and we discuss it all: the trade war with China, tax reform, inflation, food prices and the best way for governments to respond to it all,” he said. “The models we created cited by the American Economic Association has answers to some of these questions, and I try to keep everything grounded in real-world events. Whether or not we know it, economics affects us all so it’s important to see the state of thinking on these topics.”

As he looks to the future, Itskhoki doesn’t think in terms of awards or honors; he focuses on the next challenges he wants to tackle in his research.

“There is still a lot of work to be done on exchange rates; in particular we are now studying optimal exchange rate policies for the government using the insights from our earlier work,” Itskhoki said. “I am also fascinated by the topic of the new high-tech industries and AI technologies and the associated questions of productivity and welfare measurement in the world with proliferation of AI.”

Economists with UCLA ties have a history of top honors

Lloyd Shapley, professor emeritus of economics and mathematics, received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in October 2012. Shapley, who joined UCLA in 1981, was honored for his research on “matching theory,” which aims to improve the performance of markets by, for example, connecting prospective students with schools or aligning patients who need organ transplants with donors.

Guido Imbens, a Stanford University professor who was a UCLA faculty member from 1997 to 2001, won the 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Two alumni have won the Nobel in economics: William Sharpe in 1990 and Elinor Ostrom in 2009.

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

Members of UCLA LPPI pictured at CHCI Conference

UCLA LPPI shines at Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Leadership Conference

/in , , , /by
Members of UCLA LPPI pictured at CHCI Conference

Left to right: Jessie Hernandez-Reyes, Paul Barragan-Monge, Rodrigo Domínguez-Villegas, Nick González, Bryanna Ruiz Fernandez

Alise Brillault | October 5, 2022

UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute (LPPI) experts and policy fellows were well represented at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C. on September 12-15, 2022. CHCI is a leading national organization that convenes members of Congress and other public officials, corporate executives, nonprofit advocates, and thought leaders to discuss issues facing the nation and the Latino community. Taking place at the onset of Hispanic Heritage Month, the conference sought to highlight Latino excellence through an offering of 26 sessions featuring over 200 thought leaders and elected officials – including remarks from President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Paul Barragan-Monge, director of mobilization at UCLA LPPI, and Rodrigo Domínguez-Villegas, UCLA LPPI director of research, were featured panelists in two different sessions during the week. Barragan-Monge spoke in a breakout session sponsored by UCLA LPPI centered on criminal justice reform. With Latinos accounting for increasingly higher percentages of people in U.S. prisons, the conversation focused on how policymakers and community leaders can pursue comprehensive justice reforms and support formerly incarcerated Latinos in successfully reintegrating back into their communities.

In a breakout session sponsored by Casey Family Programs, Domínguez-Villegas spoke on how to strengthen communities to reduce Latino family separation. From acute crises such as family separation at the border, to longstanding socioeconomic inequities, Domínguez-Villegas discussed with other panelists about the innovative policies and interventions needed to protect Latino families’ holistic safety and well-being.

UCLA LPPI was able to sponsor the attendance of three alumni policy fellows, Bryanna Ruiz Fernandez, Jessie Hernandez-Reyes and Nick González, as well as current policy fellow Rocio Perez.

Ruiz Fernandez had a powerful experience reconnecting with her former UCLA LPPI colleagues in the nation’s capital. Having recently graduated from UCLA with a B.A. in political science and chicana/o studies, Ruiz Fernández is now working as a financial analyst at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in Washington, D.C.

“Sharing a space filled with Latina/o trailblazers in public policy, as a UCLA LPPI alumni, highlighted the abundance of opportunities I have been granted as a result of mentors like Sonja Diaz and Rodrigo Domínguez-Villegas, who are dedicated to opening doors for young Latinos hoping to enact meaningful change across our communities,” Ruiz Fernández remarked.

González, now a second-year Master of Public Policy student at Georgetown University and intern for U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, was inspired by Latino leaders he met at the conference and the diverse fields they work in.

“Aside from reconnecting with my UCLA LPPI colleagues, my favorite aspect of the conference was networking with so many Latinos in public policy from a broad range of issues and sectors,” said González. “Hearing about the diversity of their work felt like a reminder of LPPI’s mantra that every issue really is a Latino issue.”

Perez, currently a Master of Public Policy student at UCLA, was likewise inspired by the community of Latino leaders with whom she was able to network – and some of the high-profile speakers.

“It was incredible to learn about the journeys of Latinos in different industries and network with empowering individuals, as well as reconnect with friends and mentors,” Perez shared. “One of the highlights was witnessing remarks by both the Vice President and President of the United States – who would have thought I would be there!”

Portrait of Abel Valenzuela

Engaging with the world: Q&A with Abel Valenzuela, interim dean of social sciences

/in , , , , /by
Abel Valenzuela in front of door reading "UCLA"

Abel Valenzuela | UCLA

Jonathan Riggs | October 5, 2022

Abel Valenzuela Jr. has been a faculty member in the UCLA College’s Division of Social Sciences for nearly three decades, serving as a professor of labor studies, Chicana/o and Central American studies, and urban planning. He was also the director of UCLA’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment and is a nationally recognized authority on labor issues, immigration, and urban poverty and inequality.

Last month, Valenzuela took on the role of interim dean of social sciences following the appointment of the division’s former dean, Darnell Hunt, to the post of executive vice chancellor and provost. He will remain in the position through the end of the 2023–24 academic year.

Valenzuela spoke to us about to us about charting a path forward for the division, the importance of public engagement and how working as a dishwasher and “carwashero” in his early years instilled a work ethic that still drives him.

What does it mean to follow in the footsteps of former Dean Hunt?

Darnell Hunt is a longstanding faculty member and a gifted administrator and scholar who has pushed his discipline and the social sciences division on a formidable pathway of local and civic engagement, problem-solving and driving policy. He’s done this by drawing on UCLA’s greatest talent — its faculty and student body.

During my own leadership of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, I was able to enhance our well-established reputation for engaging Los Angeles through empirical, policy-driven research and by providing our students with research opportunities on topics important to their own lives. In my work, I often consulted with Dean Hunt to share benchmarks, discuss opportunities and ensure that our work was aligned and supported by the division. He was instrumental to our growth and success.

As I look ahead to this next chapter, I feel honored to continue his mission, and I’m confident that our shared efforts will enhance and strengthen UCLA’s public mission and dedication to excellence in problem-solving in academic research, public policy and other areas that impact the world and people’s lives.

What qualities make the social sciences division special?

The division is large and robust and includes nearly 20 academic departments and programs — and it’s driven by brilliantly accomplished faculty and students who engage deeply and thoughtfully with each other.

That idea of engagement is paramount — not only within the university but, importantly, with the broader world. The research being done in our division engages every corner of our city and our world, and it has a formidable impact. I continue to be amazed, as I reflect on my 30 years at UCLA, at all the accomplishments and discoveries our division makes on a regular basis. When I travel, I marvel at the impact our alumni are having in the world — their reach is seemingly everywhere you turn.

What are your top priorities as interim dean?

Dean Hunt was an excellent steward of the division, and his visionary and steadfast focus on changing the world through local engagement and on promoting social science that matters and that focuses on the public good are all priorities that align with my own work and philosophy. In my new leadership role, that vision will continue.

In addition, his dedication to faculty recruitment and retention and to advocating for our division with senior leadership are priorities I will be embracing as interim dean.

And finally, I intend to devote my attention to two key matters: staff morale and workplace issues, and graduate student funding — both critical to maintaining excellence in our division, as well as our competitive edge.

How can the members of the division show support now and going forward?

We can build community through reaching out to each other and also by being cognizant of the fact that we are navigating uncertain times. We need to be patient, respectful of others and kind to a fault in supporting one another.

Secondly, if you have the resources and are able to give, give to UCLA so that we can redistribute your generosity in the form of fellowships, summer internships, and in other ways that build community and support our students through research and similar opportunities.

You’ve been a teacher for a long time. What does teaching mean to you?

Teaching is connecting. It’s gratifying and exhilarating. It’s also a lot of hard work. Teaching is reciprocal — you learn when you teach. Some of the best teachers and classes in the world are here at UCLA.

My favorite advice to share with students when we discuss civic, cultural and other types of interventions is that the research process is long, and when you’re trying to impact policy, that impact is incremental. Patience is a virtue, and if you have it, you can use it in meaningful and effective ways. Small, steady steps and forward movement are the key to winning — our work is a marathon, not a race.

Is there an interesting or little-known fact about you we could share?

As a teenager, I worked at McDonald’s; as a Union 76 “carwashero” — a vacuum attendant, to be precise; as a dishwasher at White Memorial Hospital in Boyle Heights; and shortly after high school graduation, I became a bank teller. Hard work and multiple skill sets have always been a part of my experience and will guide my work ethic for the division.

How will you determine whether you’ve been successful?

Beyond the standard metrics UCLA uses to evaluate deans, I’ll leave it up to my colleagues — department chairs, research unit directors, faculty members and students — to say if my work as interim dean surpassed their expectations and standards. At UCLA, we’re all very vocal!

Finally, I’ll constantly remind myself that enhancing student success and excellence in academic outcomes is a primary catalyst in all of my decision-making.

I’m honored, humbled and thankful to the campus’s senior leadership and to Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Hunt for their confidence in me as I undertake this new leadership assignment.

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

Lynn Vavreck and Chris Tausanovitch

Q&A: UCLA political scientists on how the 2020 presidential campaign continues to reverberate

/in , , , , /by

Lynn Vavreck and Chris Tausanovitch discuss their new book, ‘The Bitter End’

Lynn Vavreck and Chris Tausanovitch

Lynn Vavreck and Chris Tausanovitch say that while many describe the U.S. electorate as “polarized,” the term “calcified” is more apt. | UCLA

Jonathan Riggs | 

With the nation’s social, racial and political divisions already laid bare by the emergence of COVID-19, the murder of George Floyd and other events, the 2020 presidential campaign became one of the most contentious in U.S. history.

In “The Bitter End: The 2020 Presidential Campaign and the Challenge to American Democracy,” UCLA political scientists Lynn Vavreck and Chris Tausanovitch, and John Sides of Vanderbilt University, assess why the campaign’s aftershocks will reverberate for decades to come. The book was published Sept. 20 by Princeton University Press.

“[H]ow leaders responded to the events of 2020 — and especially how Trump and his allies responded to the election and its aftermath — only exacerbated divisions that had been years in the making,” the authors write. “Understanding those divisions helps explain why the election came to such a bitter end, and why this bitter end may only signal the beginning of a new democratic crisis in American politics.”

The book draws observations and insights from data collected as part of Nationscape, a national political survey that the authors developed.

Now, with midterm elections upon us and a new presidential campaign on the horizon, Vavreck, UCLA’s Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics and Public Policy, and Tausanovitch, an associate professor of political science, discussed why the nation’s politics seem firmly stuck in place yet highly explosive.

What do you hope readers will take away from ‘The Bitter End’?

Chris Tausanovitch: One thing I hope they’ll take away is that “polarization” — a blanket term that gets thrown around a lot in the media — doesn’t really do much to explain the situation we’re in. Yes, we’re polarized. But talk to three different people, even three different political scientists, and you will get three different definitions of what polarization means. In the book, we use the term “calcification” because it better captures the features of American politics today.

Can you explain why calcification has become such an intractable problem?

Lynn Vavreck: The calcification we’re seeing today is born of four factors: The parties are farther apart than ever ideologically, voters within each party are more like their fellow partisans than ever, so many of our political conflicts are based on identity-inflected issues, and there is near balance between people who call themselves Democrats and Republicans right now.

That’s why politics feels both stuck and explosive: The stakes of election outcomes are very high because the other side is farther away than ever, and because of the balance between the parties, victory is always within reach for each side. That balance also means that when one party loses an election, instead of going back to the drawing board to rethink how they campaigned or what they offered, they don’t revamp their packages or strategies — they almost won! — they instead try to change the rules of the game to advantage their side. Preventing parties from changing the rules to erode democratic principles is the ultimate challenge to democracy.

You explore how the COVID-19 pandemic and other events in 2020 revealed divisions within the electorate …

Vavreck: No, those factors didn’t reveal divisions — they were subsumed by people’s existing adherence to their parties. That’s an important difference. Those factors should have reshaped politics, but they didn’t — people just doubled down on their party loyalty.

So do you see any hope for fixing the party-above-all mindset that has become the norm?

Tausanovitch: Politics doesn’t offer easy answers to big questions like how to address racism, regulate immigration or address a global pandemic. Our only prescription in the book is that we need to get past this period in which one major party is undermining one of the foundations of our democracy: our trust in the honesty and accuracy of our elections.

We have a lot of problems in this country, but accurately counting ballots is not one of them, so far. That could change if Republicans use election conspiracy theories as a pretext to meddle with the electoral process, and some candidates are currently running on a promise to do exactly that. But if we can get past this conspiracy-mongering, we can get back to the hard work of trying to resolve differences that are hard to reconcile.

What surprised you about the data you collected during the 2020 campaign?

Tausanovitch: Nationscape was designed in part to see how the public reacts to major events. We couldn’t have been handed a more dramatic year to study than 2020. Yet it turns out that Americans are very slow to change their political views and their priorities.

Lynn, you and John Sides have now written three books recapping presidential campaigns, but this was the first time Chris joined the collaboration. What did he add to the mix?

Vavreck: Chris brings a wonderful new dimension to our work. The Nationscape project was largely his idea, and the way we framed the survey questions that yielded some of the most interesting results was solely his idea.

Tausanovitch: Lynn and John are incredible political scientists, and I really admire their willingness to get things right, even if it means throwing away analyses we spent a lot of time on — or giving up on points we really wanted to make — because the evidence wasn’t quite good enough.

Now that the book is complete, how else are you planning to use the Nationscape data?

Tausanovitch: I’m currently using the data to expand on my work on understanding political priorities — the way they interact with primaries is really important. The more hard-line voters in each party have an outsized influence because they care more and are more likely to vote on the issues.

Vavreck: We completed 500,000 interviews for Nationscape, and a dream I have is to use the data to characterize the political landscape across the whole country: How are we different and how are we the same? I think people will be surprised by how many things people agree on.

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

Woman and boy on floor with laptop

Kindness is contagious and these videos can help kids catch the altruism bug

/in , , , /by

UCLA researchers create video playlist for YouTube Kids’ anti-bullying programming

Woman and boy on floor with laptop

Ivan Samkov/Pexels

Holly Ober | September 29, 2022

Key takeaways:
• UCLA researchers created a video playlist that aims to get kids to spread kindness.
• The videos are based on Bedari Kindness Institute research that shows kindness is contagious.

Some UCLA researchers think a simple, two-word message can help kids knock bullying off its feet: Be kind. The Center for Scholars & Storytellers, the Bedari Kindness Institute and the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television are partnering with YouTube Kids on a series of videos that promote kind, caring behavior in everyday situations. The series is part of YouTube Kids anti-bullying programming scheduled for October, which is National Bullying Prevention Awareness Month.

“We think kindness is the best antidote to bullying, and we believe that kindness is contagious,” said Daniel Fessler, director of the Bedari Kindness Institute and associate professor of anthropology. “The collection, which is hosted by actress Tabitha Brown, is anchored by two short animated films showing people doing good things, such as helping a stranger. These are followed by selfie videos from kids who describe witnessing someone engaging in an act of kindness, or acting kindly themselves. We hope to motivate viewers to also behave kindly.”

The videos are based on Bedari Kindness Institute research that shows people often feel motivated to help others after watching a video of someone else behaving altruistically. The uplifting feeling people experience when witnessing the morally praiseworthy actions of others, which scientists call “elevation,” is known to increase an inclination toward performing positive actions. The researchers have shown in experiments that elevation can be reliably induced through exposure to prosocial behaviors.

The collection takes a different tack than many other campaigns promoting kindness, which typically prescribe behaviors thought to promote kindness.

“Many efforts to promote kindness tell kids they should be nice, or remind them how bad it feels when someone does something unkind, but we’re skeptical those efforts have an immediate impact on behavior,” Fessler said. “In my lab, we’ve worked on contagious kindness and have found that when adults witness someone engaging in prosocial behavior, many of them are inspired to be prosocial themselves. We think this applies to children, too.”

The Center for Scholars & Storytellers

The videos follow up on a 2020 collaboration between the Center for Scholars & Storytellers and YouTube Kids, in collaboration with the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, Allies for Every Child and the Pritzker Center for Strengthening Families, that curated a playlist of selfie videos from former foster youth talking about their various identities. That playlist currently has around 40 million views.

Psychologist Yalda Uhls, who founded and directs the Center for Scholars & Storytellers, led the previous effort and identified the opportunity for another collaboration.

“When YouTube told us that in October they usually program content around bullying for younger children, we knew the Bedari Kindness Institute would be the perfect partner to create the messaging for this project,” said Uhls, who is an assistant adjunct professor of psychology.

Screenwriter and director George Huang, a professor of film, theater and television, helped produce the videos.

“Professor Fessler and the Bedari Kindness Institute’s work is phenomenal, and it’s a privilege to be creating content with the Center for Scholars and Storytellers that shares their work with a young audience,” Huang said. “With the help of Stacey Freeman and psychology doctoral student Ellyn Pueschel, we’ve created a playlist that will inspire, entertain and spread the word about kindness.”

In one of the animated shorts, strangers who are the recipients of kind acts “pay it forward” to other strangers. In the other animated short, an altruistic individual is eventually rewarded with kindness by two children who watched as she selflessly helped others.

Giving parents the tools

To accompany the videos, Stacey Freeman, executive director of the Bedari Kindness Institute, is developing a parent resource guide. She also recruited kids ages 6-12 to create selfie-style videos as a relatable way for kids to see other kids talking about the importance of kindness. Both the parent resource guide and the selfie videos help to amplify the kindness messages in the playlist while also helping parents guide their children toward kindness in their everyday interactions.

“At the Bedari Kindness Institute, we’re a scholarly organization that seeks to translate research and knowledge into real world applications,” Freeman said. “So we were excited when Yalda approached us with this opportunity because we think that research on kindness can inform the use of video content to help kids become a positive force in the world.”

Fessler and Uhls said the playlist is intended to be a safe place to which parents can direct their kids and watch with them. Parents will also have access to a resource guide to help them guide their children toward kindness in everyday interactions with others.

“The content will be inspiring and uplifting so parents don’t have to worry what kids are consuming,” Uhls said. “We’re trying to be a positive force.”

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