CSRC Newsletter - Summer 2022

Last week, as the USA marked its 246th year as an independent nation, I reflected on the fragility of our democracy. This year has been especially tumultuous. Ongoing hardships are being exacerbated by the pandemic, gun violence is widespread, and attacks on human and civil rights are escalating. During this challenging time, I feel incredibly fortunate to be leading the CSRC, where I’m connected to faculty, researchers, and staff who are committed to advancing the needs of students and our communities and to advocates across California and beyond who are fighting for equity, inclusivity, and social justice.

 

In 2020 the Office of the Chancellor announced that efforts were underway to have UCLA designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) by 2025, and in recent months the CSRC has worked with dedicated groups of faculty to implement key elements of the chancellor’s HSI Infrastructure Initiative. The initiative focuses on laying the foundation for programs and policies that will reflect California’s ethnic and cultural diversity. Faculty committees selected our inaugural group of five HSI Initiative Postdoctoral Fellows and nine Latinx Studies Seed Grant recipients. The committees also established plans for eight faculty searches in the coming year. The CSRC will conduct joint searches for tenure-track faculty whose research, mentoring, and/or experiences have ties to Latinx communities in the fields of engineering, statistics, psychology, social welfare, gender studies, English, political science, and interdisciplinary neuroscience. The CSRC is fortunate to have recently hired César Oyervides-Cisneros to help with the administration of these initiatives. One of his first accomplishments was helping coordinate a reception for UCLA’s Latinx STEM faculty and postdocs, which was organized by the CSRC and co-sponsored by the David Geffen School of Medicine, the College of Life Sciences, the College of Physical Sciences, and the Samueli School of Engineering. In other HSI-aligned work, the CSRC’s associate director, Carlos Santos, is leading the newly formed task force within the Department of Social Welfare in order to enhance social work research and training focused on serving Latinx communities.  

 

To address the issues and concerns of California’s young Latinx majority and other diverse youth, the CSRC has invested in community-engaged research that is developing recommendations for strengthening our democratic institutions and tackling persistent social inequalities. I am especially proud of the UC, community college, and high school students who are part of the California Freedom Summer Participatory Action Research Project. These students are leading research studies, campaigns, and youth conferences across the state. Their work will inform the CSRC’s research agenda by collecting data on the types of investment and support needed to allow young people from marginalized communities to thrive. This participatory action research aligns with the framework presented in Educating toward a Multiracial Democracy in California, a recent working paper from the UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access that was developed in collaboration with the CSRC.

 

In a time of multiple crises, it is my hope that the CSRC, through deep collaborations and incisive research, will help inform solutions to pressing social problems. Given the recent Supreme Court decision that undermines women’s health and self-determination, this includes making sure that the voices of young Latinas are heard. To this end, the CSRC is honored to be partnering with the Latino Policy and Politics Institute on the Latina Futures, 2050 Lab.  Funded by a $15 million California state budget allocation, the lab will support research and programming that emphasizes the rights and leadership of Latinas in civil society and the workplace.

 

The CSRC‘s research agenda and programming depends on the support and collaboration of so many individuals. I am grateful for all those who join us in our efforts here on campus and in the community. ¡Adelante Juntos!

 

 

OPPORTUNITIES

EVENTS

NEWS

• Stevie Ruiz is an associate professor of environmental justice, critical race theory, and Chicana/o studies at California State University, Northridge, and was the Institute of American Cultures visiting scholar at the CSRC for 2021-22. He was also a Huntington Long-Term Fellow. His publications during the year included the article ”Camp Chicano: The Racialization of the Great Outdoors in the Civilian Conservation Corps,” forthcoming in Latino Studies. He also co-edited a special issue of Resilience: A Journal of Environmental Humanities titled ”Environmental Justice in Chicana/o Communities,” and he co-authored a paper with his students, “Contested Cartography: Transformational Teaching and GIS Research in Chicanx Studies,” that appeared in the same issue. Ruiz chaired a panel on the South Asian Farmer’s Movement at the Association for Asian Studies conference in Oahu, Hawaii, in March. Finally, he completed a full draft of his book manuscript, “Stewards of the Land: Race, Space, and Environmental Justice,” to be published by University of North Carolina Press. His publications can be found at https://csun.academia.edu/StevieRuiz
• Uriel Serrano is a PhD candidate in sociology and critical race and ethnic studies at UC Santa Cruz and was a 2021-22 Ford Dissertation Fellow and UC President's Dissertation Fellow based at the CSRC. During the year, Serrano worked on various collaborative projects with youth organizations in Los Angeles. He co-authored the op-ed “How a Coalition Creates Paths to Healing for Young Men of Color” for KCET (December 2021). In 2022, he published the co-authored article “Towards Community Rooted Research and Praxis: Reflections on the BSS Safety and Youth Justice Project” in Social Sciencesand, in collaboration with Brittany P. Battle, “Toward a Du Boisian Paradigm of Family Science” in the Journal of Family Theory and Review. He is currently completing two manuscripts from his dissertation project. The first explores how criminalization shapes the racialized emotions of children and youth in Los Angeles. The second examines how Black and Latinx young men engage in intersectional thinking, how it informs their analysis of the carceral state, and how abolition and intersectionality inform their activism and coalition building. Finally, Serrano was an invited speaker at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting; the Cal State University Young Men of Color Forum; UC Santa Cruz; Montclair State University; CSULA; and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Serrano will complete his dissertation this summer and has accepted a postdoctoral fellowship in Community Organizing and Social Computing in the Department of Informatics at UC Irvine.
• Vincente Carrillo was the CSRC's 2021-22 IUPLR-Mellon Dissertation Fellow. During the year he published the article “Pride Arrives to the Barrio: An Ethnographic Reflection of Boyle Height’s Orgullo Fest” in Latinx Talk (April 2022). In June, Carrillo graduated from UCLA with a PhD in Chicana/o and Central American studies. His dissertation, “Queer Latinx Regeneration: Boyle Heights and the Geographies of Gentrification,” explores queer-of-color belonging alongside the revitalizing barrio landscape of Boyle Heights. In the fall, Carrillo will begin a one-year postdoctoral fellowship in the Latina/o Studies Department at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.

Michael A. Olivas, presente!

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