New California budget also sets aside $15 million for renovations. It’s been big news for the UCLA Labor Center. The historic building that houses the UCLA Labor Center will be named in honor the Rev. James Lawson Jr., a a civil rights and workers’ rights leader who worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr., and the 2021-22 California budget includes $15 million to renovate the building that overlooks MacArthur Park.
UCLA has leased this building since 2002 and purchased the building in November 2020. This one-time allocation will fund necessary renovations for the building and establish a permanent home for the center, which has provided a base for low-wage worker research, innovative labor projects, and community-engaged learning and leadership development for hundreds of UCLA students.
Lawson has taught a labor studies course on nonviolence at UCLA for the past twenty years. In 2018, Lawson received the UCLA Medal, the campus’s highest honor.
The UCLA Labor Center was established in 1964 as the Center for Labor Research and Education within the UCLA Institute of Industrial Relations, now the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, through a statewide joint labor-university committee. Since its inception, the center has been dedicated to research, education, and service in the interest of California’s workers.
“We wanted to bridge the gap between the university and the labor movement, worker centers, and community-based social justice organizations,” said Kent Wong, director at the UCLA Labor Center. “We’re located in the most immigrant-dense zip code in the country and in direct proximity to the communities served by our research and programs.”
“Asian Americans,” the five-part miniseries created for PBS by Renee Tajima-Peña, UCLA professor of Asian American studies, has received a Peabody Award.
The series, which aired in spring 2020, tells stories of struggle, progress and solidarity from the perspectives of multiple Asian American communities, highlighting their national, ethnic, religious, political, linguistic and cultural diversity.
Tajima-Peña’s production company shares the Peabody with the Center for Asian American Media, public broadcaster WETA-TV, postproduction house Flash Cuts and the Independent Television Service. The series was honored by the Peabody Awards for “its revelatory storytelling as a demonstration of activism and solidarity in the American story and fight for justice and dignity.”
“We’re all thrilled not only by the award, but the recognition that this history matters, at a time when we’re in the throes of a backlash to ethnic studies and to a perspective of American history that acknowledges the central role of systemic racism,” said Tajima-Peña, who is also the director of the UCLA Center for Ethnocommunications.
An Academy Award–nominated film director (“Who Killed Vincent Chin?”), she said she also feels like the current moment is powerful in the fight for racial justice and equity.
“Other people are really hungry to understand who we are today by understanding our past,” Tajima-Peña said. “Over the last 15 months, we’ve seen stereotypes of Asian Americans weaponized, as either the perpetual foreigner and walking virus, or the model minority deployed as a wedge against other people of color. In all the episodes of ‘Asian Americans,’ we tried to connect those fault lines from our arrival as immigrants to the current moment, and to center the resilience and activism of Asian Americans in resisting systemic racism.”
Two years in the making, “Asian Americans” was a very UCLA-centric project. Grace Lee, an alumna of UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television, directed two of the episodes. Several other alumni were crew members on multiple episodes. And David Yoo, a professor of Asian American studies and history and vice provost of the UCLA Institute of American Cultures, served as lead scholar on the project.
Respected for its integrity and revered for its standards of excellence, the Peabody represents a high honor for creators of television, podcast/radio and digital media. Chosen each year by a diverse board of jurors through unanimous vote, Peabody Awards are given in the categories of entertainment, documentary, news, podcast/radio, arts, children’s and youth, public service and multimedia programming. Founded in 1940 at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia, the Peabody Awards are based in Athens, Georgia.
This article, written by Jessica Wolf, originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.
Graduating senior forged new connections to Vietnamese heritage through UCLA class
UCLA senior Anne Nguyen. (Photo Courtesy of Anne Nguyen)
UCLA senior Anne Nguyen. (Photo Courtesy of Anne Nguyen)
Anne Nguyen started observing the economic and emotional tolls of the pandemic before a lot of others.
Having grown up in a community of mostly Vietnamese immigrants, she knew families who owned nail salons, people who worked as nail techs and also was familiar with some of the health concerns given the exposure to chemicals in that industry. It wasn’t until she came to UCLA in 2017 that she realized the severity of some of the health problems associated with spending hours in a salon.
Then in March 2020, nail salon workers were being laid off even before shutdown orders because of the rapid decline in business after false reports that the virus was spreading in nail salons. Soon after there was the rise in anti-Asian racism.
“The impact on this community feels close to home,” said Nguyen, a soon-to-be UCLA graduate from San Jose, California, who is determined to help the broader immigrant community that raised her.
During her time at UCLA, Nguyen spent four years volunteering with the student-run Vietnamese Community Health organization, or VCH, which operates mostly in Orange County offering screenings for hypertension, blood glucose, cholesterol, as well as women’s health services like mammograms or OB-GYN consultations.
Nguyen and the group have also focused on offering connections to mental health providers who speak Vietnamese. She says the community, especially the elderly members, have historically stigmatized the use of mental health resources, but that these resources are invaluable to refugees and immigrants who are adjusting to a foreign culture and experiences.
“I think that my work with VCH was particularly meaningful to me because it introduced me to community-based medicine,” said Nguyen, who is on track to earn her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and a minor in Asian American studies. “I loved the focus that the organization had on educating their patients, as well as treating/screening them. It really helped me establish my service philosophy of giving communities the tools they need to commit to long-term change themselves.”
This past winter quarter, Nguyen’s desire to help Asian immigrants, took a more academic turn. She enrolled in a course put on by the Asian American studies department and the UCLA Center for Community Engagement called “Power to the People: Asian American Studies 140XP.”
The Center for Community Engagement supports community-engaged research, teaching and learning in partnership with communities and organizations throughout Los Angeles and beyond. This particular course was borne out of the hunger strike at San Francisco States University in the 60s, during which students demanded the school offer ethnic studies classes and that the school diversify its faculty and student body. This course, which has been taught at UCLA for seven years exposes students to different Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in greater Los Angeles and creates opportunities to work directly with those organizations.
During the course, Nguyen met with the instructor and her classmates two hours each week to discuss history and theory, and met virtually with community organizers, advocates and members of the nail salon industry through the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative. The statewide, grassroots organization addresses health care, environmental factors, reproductive justice, and other social issues faced by low-income, immigrant and refugee women from Vietnam.
Dung Nguyen, program and outreach manager for the collaborative, supervised Anne Nguyen (no relation) and previous UCLA students who interned at the organization. Dung said there is nothing like working directly for an organization to bring social activism to life.
“Our student interns often reflect how civic engagement, advocacy, community organizations and collective power in a text book are very different than seeing this all play out in reality,” Dung Nguyen said.
Nguyen and another student phone banked to raise awareness about two bills in the state legislature — assembly bills 15 and 16, which were intended to protect tenants from being evicted during the pandemic and beyond. The pair created packages of Lunar New Year cards and masks for members of the nail salon collaborative to reinforce social bonds with the group during the isolation of the pandemic. They ran a small fundraiser to support nail salon workers who lost income during the pandemic and couldn’t meet their most basic needs. They also conducted a survey to see which members had been vaccinated, and then helped women get vaccination appointments so they could return to work safely.
“I did not expect to take a class like this when I came to UCLA since I never thought of volunteering/interning as something you can structure into a curriculum,” Nguyen said. “Every organization had a different method of organizing to best fit their communities and this class really reinforced that this was valid. The class gave me a greater appreciation for all the thought that went into the creation and continuation of the nail salon collaborative and all of the other class partners.”
Community organizer and course lecturer Sophia Cheng said that all the community partners tend to see themselves as part of the ethnic studies movement that started in the 1960s.
Cheng, who is the primary liaison for all the organizations, pushes students to go beyond critiquing, analyzing and dissecting situations, instead asking them to come up with real solutions to real issues. She said that she’s not trying to train every student to join the non-profit sector; there aren’t enough jobs in the Asian American nonprofit sector. Instead, Cheng focuses on different ways students can serve their communities in whatever career path they take.
Nguyen’s trajectory continues to be influenced by Cheng’s approach.
“I want to be a doctor, and I am focused on community health,” Nguyen said. “The course taught me to be more cognizant of cultural fit when it comes to health care, and other needs. A lot of Asian American and Pacific Islander patients might not trust or have resources like in typical western health care. The older generation also might not trust the younger generation. I’m using approaches from class to figure out how to approach medicine and how to help people, from the place where they are. I try to figure out what are the needs of the people, how can I serve them, and help them strengthen what they have to improve themselves.”
This article, written by Elizabeth Kivowitz, originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.
Bradley Burnam ’01, founding member of the recently formed UCLA Social Sciences Dean’s Advisory Board, says that delivering UCLA’s Department of Sociology’s 2019 commencement address was “the most amazing day of my life.” The theme: “Know Your Why.”
One might assume to know Burnam’s “why” from the story behind Turn Therapeutics, the biotechnology company he founded that specializes in advanced wound care and infection control. A severe skin and cartilage infection born of antibiotic resistant bacteria led to 19 surgeries on his scalp and ear. The technology he invented in his home-built laboratory ended up saving his own life and helping many others.
Q. What was your “why” when you headed to UCLA?
A. I really wasn’t certain what I was interested in when I started. And with UCLA being a big place, it was hard to find that in the first couple of years. While there, I became entrenched in a program through which students got to teach seminars on public speaking, study skills and speed-reading. It made me realize I really love to teach. I also was extremely interested in how to teach people with learning differences. When I left UCLA, all I wanted to do was teach.
I got my master’s in education at Stanford, and my thesis was on how to address ADHD without chemicals. After graduation, I worked with kids with learning disabilities. My life took several random turns after that, but my “why” never changed. Today, my company is my teaching platform and the subject is very personal, having been a victim of a recurring, antibiotic resistant infection.
Q. Who inspired your path?
A. My dad, who was a cardiologist, would go to the emergency room where someone was dying of a heart attack. An hour later, he’d be back home and that person would be alive. His having that kind of impact on people’s lives blew me away. Because of him, I wanted to be a healer.
Q. You’ve since worked with cardiology patients?
A. I was a medical device rep for two big pacemaker companies, a job that let me experience a little of what I dreamt about growing up. I’d be in the operating room tuning up what was controlling patients’ hearts and making sure they were beating properly. There were occasions where I’d notice the programming was wrong and could make a change that would allow that person to walk out an entirely different person
Q. What is success to you?
A. When I see photos and studies of patients whose limbs my company has saved from amputation or whose severe eczema outbreaks we have halted, that keeps me going. It’s a crazy thing to wake up and think, “My dad got to help a few people at a time. I get to help thousands at a time.”
Q. What does your future look like?
A. My immediate future is decidedly Turn’s future. I plan to grow this company as a major disruptor in the medtech and pharmaceutical space. Eventually, I want to go back and get my Ph.D. in social sciences with an emphasis in public health, then join the professor ranks while continuing to innovate in biotech.
Q. What advice would you give to others?
A. Figure out what you’re amazing at and then perfect it, rather than trying to be good at everything. Even if you have to take smaller wins over time and reduce instant gratification, don’t sacrifice the identity of your “why” over quick money. You’ll never forgive yourself.
Early on, there were people who wanted to take my technology and apply it to minimally impactful, but highly profitable indications. While it probably would have made a ton of money, I wouldn’t have received a single photo from a patient whose limb was saved thanks to this technology.
A proud Northern Cheyenne Indian and Chicana, Desi Small-Rodriguez says that she’s a relative first, then a researcher and teacher, and thus considers herself a bit of an anomaly in academia.
“I need to remain accountable to my community,” said Small-Rodriguez, an assistant professor of sociology and Amer-ican Indian studies in the UCLA College and the first Indigenous woman to be jointly hired by the sociology department and the American Indian studies program. “That’s how many Indig-enous faculty feel. Academia can take you far away from the communities, lands and waters that ground you. I’m consistently reminded by mentors, ‘Always lift as you climb,’ because this is such a lonely path.”
In her research Small-Rodriguez examines those on the periph-ery of mainstream data collection efforts like government surveys and the U.S. Census, to understand the ways people in these groups are or are not being counted. She says these efforts often do a poor job of collecting data on Indigenous peoples, undocu-mented migrants, those experiencing homelessness, the LGBTQ community and other marginalized groups, which causes harm and perpetuates inequality.
“The U.S. is the most unequal country of any of the developed countries in the world,” said Small-Rodriguez, who joined the UCLA faculty last fall. “I’m interested in how systems amplify suf-fering and why suffering is being disproportionately experienced by certain populations, and also systems of erasure and how erasure perpetuates inequality. If your literal presence is com-pletely erased, that is a unique form of inequality and injustice.”
MAKING DATA WORK TO BUILD EQUITY
Small-Rodriguez sees wide-ranging applications for her work that could drive systemic change in how data collection efforts are organized and operated – leading to better government decision-making and policy.
“Ultimately, I’m an optimist. I believe that just as structures of inequality were built and maintained, so too can they be dismantled and replaced,” Small-Rodriguez said. “And like most Indigenous scholars, I am called upon to work, advocate and serve in different directions. Being a professor is simply one of my dream jobs. I have many paths that will sustain me, and I believe that eventually all roads lead home.
“This means that part of my work in academia includes making myself literally obsolete. I want to train enough young scholars to take over this work, so that one day I can be back full-time on my homelands living the Cheyenne way of life in good relation with all that is seen and unseen.”
With her move to Los Angeles delayed due to the pandemic, Small-Rodriguez resides on the Northern Cheyenne reservation in Montana where she grew up. Over the past few months, she has been encouraging people in her community to get vaccinated against COVID-19, especially given the disproportionate impact of the virus on Indigenous peoples early in the pandemic.
“I’m thankful for all the brave and amazing frontline medical workers and our tribal leaders who continue to exercise tribal sovereignty so that we can get all of our people vaccinated regardless of age or health status,” she said.
Small-Rodriguez also co-hosts “All My Relations,” the mostpopular podcast in the Indigenous world with more than 1 million downloads.
A LEAP OF FAITH INTO DEMOGRAPHY
As a student, Small-Rodriguez became interested in demography and social science because her sociology professor, one of the only Indigenous sociologists and demographers in the world, noticed her abilities in the field. He offered her a job with a Māori doctoral student he was advising who was doing research in New Zealand. She learned how to be a researcher and demographer working for tribes in New Zealand for many years, and then con-ducting the same type of work for tribes in the U.S.
“My time in New Zealand was life changing,” she said. While there, Small-Rodriguez worked on tribal census projects, community surveys, and social determinants of health and policy research. “It’s where I learned how to do research and build data by Indigenous Peoples for Indigenous Peoples. I also learned about the boundaries of indigeneity and tribal belonging in ways that are far different than for Indigenous Peoples in North America. In New Zealand, Māori kinship is affirmed in very inclusive ways as compared to minimum blood quantum policies that we use here. That led to another area of my research understand-ing the boundaries of belonging for Indigenous peoples.”
Small-Rodriguez points out that the word data comes from the Latin “datum,” meaning something given. For Indigenous Peoples, the term more often means “something taken” – and that data has been used as another method by which others extract some-thing from the Indigenous, leaving behind very broken systems to rebuild and repair. She references everything from Indigenous bodies, to language, to knowledge of the important connections with lands, water and animals as having become disrupted. She calls that “data erasure” an ongoing effort of genocide.
Amid all the loss, the recent vaccination effort illustrates an area of hope. “The only reason that Indigenous Peoples now have some of the highest rates of vaccination uptake is because of tribal sovereignty,” Small-Rodriguez said. “Tribes exercised sovereignty and have been able to protect their people in ways federal, state and local governments have not. Tribal sovereigns know how to get their people onboard because of their deep commitment to collective survival. In Indigenous communities, we are born and raised with a collective survival strategy, and we’ve been doing this since we were invaded 500 years ago. This is something that we have seen shine through in the middle of this pandemic — something positive amidst so much negative.”
Big Data and Society
There are countless applications of big data that help us solve many of the problems that define life today in American society. This video highlights two UCLA Social Science researchers, Till von Wachter (Prof. Economics, Assoc. Dean of Research Division of Social Science, and Fac. Dir. California Policy Lab) and Safiya Noble (Prof. Information Studies, African American Studies, and Gender Studies, Co-Dir. UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry), and the important, big data research they are leading in the social sciences.
In the UCLA Division of Social Sciences, we are dedicated to advancing research with real-world impact. As the #1 public university located in one of the most diverse cities in the world, we are ideally positioned to address critical issues facing our communities. Through the work of our world-class faculty – and our students who will become the leaders of tomorrow – we strive to be a leading agent for change across the nation and around the world.
As a public institution, our work is ultimately in service of you, our community. By engaging LA, we are changing the world.
UCLA College to host virtual commencement celebration June 11
Social justice campaigner and civic leader D’Artagnan Scorza to give the keynote address at the UCLA College’s 2021 virtual commencement ceremony. (Photo Credit: G L Askew II)
Social justice campaigner and civic leader D’Artagnan Scorza to give the keynote address at the UCLA College’s 2021 virtual commencement ceremony. (Photo Credit: G L Askew II)
Civic leader, social justice advocate and UCLA alumnus D’Artagnan Scorza will deliver the keynote address at the UCLA College’s virtual commencement celebration on Friday, June 11. The program, which begins at 6 p.m. PDT, will also feature remarks by Chancellor Gene Block, Nobel laureate Andrea Ghez, class of 2021 student speakers and others.
A decorated U.S. Navy veteran, Scorza is the inaugural executive director of racial equity for Los Angeles County and president of the UCLA Alumni Association. He is also a lecturer at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.
“D’Artagnan Scorza has given back to his fellow Bruins and his fellow Americans in myriad ways since his graduation,” said David Schaberg, senior dean of the UCLA College and dean of humanities. “His incredible life experiences and dedication to social change make him the ideal person to inspire our graduating seniors to aim high and make a difference in the world.”
In 2008, Scorza founded the nonprofit Social Justice Learning Institute and as its executive director over the next 12 years led efforts to open up academic and career opportunities to Black and Latino youth while establishing community gardens, a farmers’ market and healthy lifestyle centers in his hometown of Inglewood, California. His research, policy initiatives and grassroots organizing have had a significant impact on high-need communities throughout California.
“This year’s graduating class deserves so much credit for their achievement and resilience in the face of the pandemic,” Scorza said. “It’s an incredible honor to have been asked to give the commencement address to this remarkable group of Bruins.”
While studying as an undergraduate UCLA, Scorza enlisted in the Navy following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and served for four-and-a-half years, including a deployment to Iraq. He later returned to UCLA, where he completed his bachelor’s degree in the study of religion in 2007 and earned his doctorate in education in 2013. As a UC student regent from 2007 to 2009, he helped pass policies that established veterans’ service centers and prioritized $160 million for student services across UC campuses.
Scorza also served as president of the Inglewood Unified School District Board of Education and chaired a campaign to secure $350 million in school improvement bonds for the district’s schools.
Scorza was invited to be the 2021 commencement speaker after being selected from among wide field of candidates by UCLA’s Commencement Committee, which comprises students, faculty members and administrators.
Along with his UCLA degrees, Scorza holds a bachelor’s in liberal studies from National University in San Diego.
Virtual and in-person commencement ceremonies
In addition to the virtual celebration, UCLA plans to recognize members of the class of 2021 individually and in person at a series of events beginning the weekend of June 11; these events will be held over the course of several days and will adhere to public safety guidelines. For information on the in-person and virtual celebrations, please visit the UCLA College’s commencement website and UCLA’s campus commencement website.
Campus leaders announced in April that while the UCLA College and other units would be hosting commencement ceremonies virtually due to the continued public health risks of the COVID-19 pandemic, UCLA remains committed to hosting in-person commencement ceremonies for the classes of 2021and 2020 and their families and friends at a later date.
This article, written by Margaret MacDonald, originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.
Movements for Social Justice
In the UCLA Division of Social Sciences, we are dedicated to advancing research with real-word impact. As the #1 public university located in one of the most diverse cities in the world, we are ideally positioned to address critical issues facing our communities. Through the work of our world-class faculty – and our students who will become the leaders of tomorrow – we strive to be a leading agent for change across the nation and around the world.
Movements for social justice motivate many of our researchers to gain a better understanding of the forces that shape the world around us. I am pleased to share this video highlighting two such researchers, Kelly Lytle Hernandez and Abel Valenzuela, and the important, action-oriented research they are leading in the social sciences.As a public institution, our work is ultimately in service of you, our community. By engaging LA, we are changing the world.
Regards,
Darnell Hunt, Ph.D.
Dean, UCLA Division of Social Sciences
Professor of Sociology and African American Studies
Five UCLA College professors elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
UCLA 2021 AAAS members
Top row: UCLA professors Terence Blanchard, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Barbara Geddes and Elisabeth Le Guin.
Bottom row: UCLA professors Kelly Lytle Hernández, Daniel Posner, Marilyn Raphael and Victoria Sork. (Photos Courtesy of UCLA)
UCLA 2021 AAAS members
Top row: UCLA professors Terence Blanchard, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Barbara Geddes and Elisabeth Le Guin.
Bottom row: UCLA professors Kelly Lytle Hernández, Daniel Posner, Marilyn Raphael and Victoria Sork. (Photos Courtesy of UCLA)
Eight faculty members, five of whom are from the UCLA College were elected today to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies. A total of 252 artists, scholars, scientists and leaders in the public, nonprofit and private sectors were elected to the academy today, including honorary members from 17 countries.
UCLA College’s 2021 honorees are:
Barbara Geddes, professor emeritus and former chair of political science, conducts research on the breakdown of authoritarian regimes, democratization, authoritarian transitions and political development, with a focus on Latin American politics. Geddes’ early work included studies of bureaucratic reform and corruption in Brazil and the politics of economic policy-making in Latin America. Early conclusions from her research about regime duration and modes of transition were published in “What Do We Know about Democratization after Twenty Years, Annual Review of Political Science 2” (1999). Geddes also published a book on comparative political research methods called “Paradigms and Sand Castles: Theory Building and Research Design in Comparative Politics” (2003).
Kelly Lytle Hernández, a professor of history and African American studies, is the director of UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. Lytle Hernández was awarded a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which said her research on “the intersecting histories of race, mass incarceration, immigration, and cross-border politics is deepening our understanding of how imprisonment has been used as a mechanism for social control in the United States.” One of the nation’s leading experts on race, immigration and mass incarceration, she is the author of the award-winning books, “Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol” (University of California Press, 2010), and “City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles” (University of North Carolina Press, 2017). She holds UCLA’s Thomas E. Lifka Chair in History, and is the principal investigator for Million Dollar Hoods, a university-based, community-drive research project that maps the fiscal and human cost of mass incarceration in Los Angeles.
Daniel Posner, UCLA’s James S. Coleman Professor of International Development, focuses his political science research on ethnic politics, research design, distributive politics and the political economy of development in Africa. His most recent co-authored book, “Coethnicity: Diversity and the Dilemmas of Collective Action,” (Russell Sage, 2009) employs experimental games to probe the sources of poor public goods provision in ethnically diverse communities. His first book was “Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa.” (Cambridge, 2005). He is the co-founder of the Working Group in African Political Economy, a member of the Evidence in Governance and Politics network, a faculty associate of the Center for Effective Global Action and a research affiliate of the International Growth Center.
Marilyn Raphael, professor of geography and interim director of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, is the co-author of the award-winning book “The Encyclopedia of Weather and Climate Change: A Complete Visual Guide,” and the author or co-author of more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles. Raphael was elected vice president of the American Association of Geographers, the world’s largest geography society effective July 1 of this year. Her research expertise includes atmospheric circulation dynamics, Antarctic sea ice variability and global climate change. She has been committed to introducing undergraduates to the world of climatology and graduate students to the joys of research.
Victoria Sork, is a distinguished professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and a renowned plant evolutionary biologist. Sork was award the 2020 Molecular Ecology Prize, which recognizes an outstanding scientist who has made significant contributions to the field. Elected in 2004 as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, she has conducted pioneering research in the field of landscape genomics, which integrates genomics, evolutionary biology and conservation science. She is particularly concerned with the ecological and genetic processes that will determine whether California oaks will tolerate climate change. She and members of her laboratory conduct research throughout California and Western North America from Baja California through Alaska. Research she led in 2019 examines whether the trees being replanted in the wake of California’s fires will be able to survive a climate that is continuing to warm.
Other UCLA 2021 honorees are:
Terence Blanchard, a six-time Grammy-winning jazz trumpeter, composer and music educator, holds UCLA’s Kenny Burrell Chair in Jazz Studies in UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music. Blanchard has released 20 solo albums and composed more than 60 film scores. Blanchard served as artistic director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz (now named the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz) from 2000 to 2011. In this role, he presented masterclasses and worked with students in the areas of artistic development, arranging, composition and career counseling. Today, the institute partners with music school to offer the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz Performance at UCLA, a special college-level program that allows masters of jazz to pass on their expertise to the next generation of jazz musicians.
Elisabeth Le Guin, professor of musicology in the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, is a Baroque cellist, and was a founding member of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the Artaria String Quartet. In recent years, Le Guin has become involved in the movimiento jaranero, a transnational grassroots musical activism in Mexico and Mexican immigrant communities in the United States. She has written two books, “Boccherini’s Body: an Essay in Carnal Musicology” (2006) and “The Tonadillo in Performance: Lyric Comedy in Enlightenment Spain” (2014), both published by UC Press. She received the American Musicological Society’s Alfred Einstein and Noah Greenberg Awards. She re-started UCLA´s Early Music Ensemble in 2009 after a 15-year hiatus.
Kimberlé Crenshaw, a distinguished professor of law in the UCLA School of Law, is an expert on race and the law, structural racism and discrimination based on race, gender and class. A renowned scholar on civil rights and constitutional law, Crenshaw was a founder and has been a leader in the intellectual movement called critical race theory. She is the executive director of theAfrican American Policy Forum, an innovative think tank connecting academics, activists and policy-makers to dismantle structural inequality and engage new ideas and perspectives to transform public discourse and policy. Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” more than 30 years ago to describe how race, class, gender, and other individual characteristics “intersect” with one another and overlap.
“We are honoring the excellence of these individuals, celebrating what they have achieved so far and imagining what they will continue to accomplish,” said David Oxtoby, president of the academy. “The past year has been replete with evidence of how things can get worse; this is an opportunity to illuminate the importance of art, ideas, knowledge and leadership that can make a better world.”
The American Academy of Arts and Scienceswas founded in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock and others who believed the new republic should honor exceptionally accomplished individuals. Previous fellows have included George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and UCLA astrophysicist Andrea Ghez.
It also is an independent policy research center that undertakes studies of complex and emerging problems. Current academy members represent today’s innovative thinkers in many fields and professions, including more than 250 Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners.
This article, written by Stuart Wolpert, originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.
2021 Hollywood Diversity Report: Audiences showed up for diverse films in theaters, online
Netflix action-thriller “The Old Guard,” directed by UCLA alumna Gina Prince-Bythewood, featured a cast that was 50% minority. The series landed in the top 10 streaming charts for all racial groups — No. 6 for Asian and Latino households, No. 5 for Black households and No. 9 for white households. (Photo Credit: Aimee Spinks)
Netflix action-thriller “The Old Guard,” directed by UCLA alumna Gina Prince-Bythewood, featured a cast that was 50% minority. The series landed in the top 10 streaming charts for all racial groups — No. 6 for Asian and Latino households, No. 5 for Black households and No. 9 for white households. (Photo Credit: Aimee Spinks)
– Of the top 185 films of 2020, more than half were released via streaming platforms only.
– Of the films that had a theatrical release, minority audiences accounted for the bulk of ticket purchases.
– Films with casts that were at least 21% minority enjoyed the highest online viewing ratings among all racial groups in the all-important 18–49 age category.
– Women and people of color gained ground in all job categories tracked by the report: lead actors, total cast, writers and directors.
– People of color and women are still underrepresented as film writers and directors and typically helmed lower-budget films.
Every industry felt the weight of the pandemic in 2020, and Hollywood was no exception. Business shutdowns and physical distancing efforts around the world wreaked havoc on box-office revenue and upended long-held film release strategies.
Like everyone, Hollywood studios had to get creative in 2020. UCLA’s latest Hollywood Diversity Report, published today by the UCLA College Division of Social Sciences, shows that 54.6% of the top films of 2020 were released solely via streaming subscription services, a major departure from business as usual.
More than half of U.S. adults reported that their viewing of film and series content via online subscription services increased during 2020, according to the Motion Picture Association’s latest findings referenced in the report. The global home and mobile entertainment market increased to a record $68 billion over the course of 2020, up 23% from the $55.9 billion in 2019. The U.S. share of this global market stood at nearly 44% in 2020. Latino and Black adults, in particular, consumed online content at higher levels than other groups.
The film installment of this year’s Hollywood Diversity Report tracks the top 185 films of 2020, breaking down performance by box-office revenue for theatrical releases and, new for this year, Nielsen ratings for streaming films.
Many of the big blockbuster films planned for 2020 had their release dates pushed to 2021 and beyond. For films that had a theatrical run in 2020, minorities were major drivers of box-office ticket sales, as with previous years. For six of the top 10 theatrically released films, minorities accounted for the majority of domestic ticket sales during opening weekend. For the seventh top film, minorities accounted for half the ticket sales.
The Hollywood Diversity Report also tracks how well women and minorities are represented in four key industry employment categories: lead actors, total cast, writers and directors.
All four job categories showed progress in 2020, but women and people of color are still underrepresented in critical behind-the-camera jobs. Women made up just 26% of film writers and just 20.5% of directors. Combined, minority groups were slightly better represented as directors at 25.4%. Just 25.9% of film writers in 2020 were people of color.
“We’ve been systematically looking at these key job categories and comparing the representation of women and people of color to the all-important bottom line for eight years, and it’s encouraging to see skyrocketing numbers this year in front of the camera,” said Darnell Hunt, dean of the UCLA College Division of Social Sciences and the report’s co-author. “This was a very interesting year to track the nimbleness of industry efforts to deliver content to audiences, who grow increasingly racially diverse each year and who it’s clear were eager to enjoy films in new ways, despite disruptions caused by the pandemic.”
UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity Report is the only study of its kind to incorporate analysis of how top films perform among different racial groups, comparing the diversity of casts, directors and writers with the diversity of American audiences.
For streaming platforms, films featuring casts that were 21% to 30% minority had the highest ratings among white, Black, Latino and Asian households and viewers 18–49.
Among the top 10 streaming films ranked by Asian and Black households, seven had casts that were more than 30% minority. Among the top 10 films ranked by Latino and white households, six had casts that were more than 30% minority.
UCLA’s report shows great progress in actor categories over its decade of data. In 2011, the first year tracked, more than half of the films fell into the lowest level of cast diversity — less than 11%. In 2020, however, 28.8% of films had the highest level of cast diversity — 50% or higher. Just under 10% of films in 2020 fell into the lowest level of cast diversity.
For the first time since the report launched in 2014, people of color were represented in the lead actor and total cast categories at levels proportionate to their presence in the American populace — 39.7% and 42%, respectively. People of color make up 40.3% of the U.S. population.
The analysis of 2020 films also looked at the correlation between directors’ and casts’ racial and gender diversity.
In 2020, nearly all of the films with a female director also featured a female lead (94.7%). Films directed by minorities had the highest level of cast diversity. And 78.3% of films directed by people of color featured minority leads.
However, the report notes, there are still relatively few examples of women and people of color running the show on big-budget films, those marketed to the broadest audience.
“Our report finds that women directors and directors of color have overwhelmingly diverse productions,” said Ana-Christina Ramon, the report’s co-author and the director of research and civic engagement for the division of social sciences. “However, these films often have smaller budgets than those helmed by male directors and white directors. So, in a year where more diverse productions were made more accessible to larger audiences through streaming services, the contrast is stark as to what types of films have the big budgets. There is a clear underinvestment of films made by, written by, and led by women and people of color.”
White film directors were more than twice as likely as minority directors to helm a film with a budget of $100 million or more — 6.4% versus 2.8%. Men and women were equally likely to direct a big-budget film in 2020 — 5.7% and 5.6%, respectively.
Women and people of color were more likely to direct films that fell into the lowest budget category of less than $20 million. For films directed by people of color, 72.3% had budgets less than $20 million, compared to 60% for white directors. It was about the same for films directed by women. Of those, 74.3% had budgets that were less than $20 million, compared to 59.2% for directors who were men.
Along those same lines, films with minority leads and writers of color also trended toward lower budgets, the report found.
Among other findings in the report:
– Women made up 47.8% of lead actors and 41.3% of overall casts in the top films of 2020. Women make up about half the U.S. population.
– Among white, Black and Middle Eastern or Northern African actors, women were significantly underrepresented in the top films of 2020, compared to men from those groups.
– Among Latino, Asian, multiracial and Native actors, women either approached parity with their male counterparts or exceeded it in films of 2020.
– The most underrepresented groups in all job categories, relative to their presence in the U.S., are Latino, Asian and Native actors, directors and writers.
The current report includes 10 years of data, making UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity Report the longest-running, consistent analysis of gender and racial diversity in the film industry. TV industry data, part two of the now biannual report, will be released in September 2021.
This article, written by Jessica Wolf, originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.
