Mark A.R. Kleiman

Mark Kleiman died July 21, 2019. A memoriam to his life and career can be found here.

Mark Kleiman was Professor Emeritus of Public Policy in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and was employed at NYU at time of his death.

Mr. Kleiman was the author of Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control; of Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results;  and of When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment, listed by The Economist as one of the “Books of the Year” for 2009.  Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (co-authored with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) was published in July 2011 by Oxford University Press. He edited the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis.

In addition to his academic work, Mr. Kleiman provided advice to local, state, and national governments on crime control and drug policy. Before he came to UCLA in 1995, he taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and at the University of Rochester. Outside of academia, he had worked for the U.S. Department of Justice (as Director of Policy and Management Analysis for the Criminal Division), for the City of Boston (as Deputy Director for Management of the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget), for Polaroid Corporation (as Special Assistant to the CEO, Edwin Land), and on Capitol Hill (as a legislative assistant to Congressman Les Aspin). He graduated from Haverford College (magna cum laude, majoring in political science, philosophy, and economics) and did his graduate work (M.P.P. and Ph.D.) at the Kennedy School.

Mr. Kleiman blogged at The Reality-Based Community, at samefacts.org

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

When Brute Force Fails
Since the crime explosion of the 1960s, the prison population in the United States has multiplied fivefold, to one prisoner for every hundred adults — a rate unprecedented in American history and unmatched anywhere in the world. Even as the prisoner head count continues to rise, crime has stopped falling, and poor people and minorities still bear the brunt of both crime and punishment. When Brute Force Fails explains how we got into the current trap and how we can get out of it: to cut both crime and the prison population in half within a decade.
Read more

Excess: Drug Policy for Results
Kleiman, M. Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results. New York: Basic Books, 1992. Kleiman, M.Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Cost of Control. Greenwich, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1989.
Read more

Karen Kaufmann

Karen Kaufmann is a lecturer in the department of Public Policy in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.  She received her Ph.D. in political science from UCLA and was an Associate Professor in Government and Politics at the University of Maryland before returning to California.

Kaufmann’s research on urban politics explores the nature of power in American cities and the ever-present challenges that political leaders face with respect to enacting policies that aid the poor. Kaufmann (with collaborator Thomas Holbrook) was awarded a $750,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study race relations and political behavior in American cities.  Her work examines local politics in the context of diversity, with an eye to the roles that competing interests and incentives play in undermining successful minority coalitions. She is the author of numerous articles and two books — “The Urban Voter: Group Conflict and Mayoral Voting Behavior in American Cities” (University of Michigan Press) and “Unconventional Wisdom: Facts and Myths about American Voters” (with John R. Petrocik and Daron R. Shaw, Oxford University Press).

Kaufmann teaches classes on urban poverty and public policy, urban politics and U.S. housing policy.

 

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

The Urban Voter: Group Conflict and Mayoral Voting Behavior in American Cities
University of Michigan Press, 2004
The Consequences of Marriage and Motherhood: How Gender Traits Influence Voter Evaluations of Female Candidates
Journal of Women, Politics and PolicyFebruary 2015, 6:1:1-21 (with Melissa Bell).
Turf Wars: Local Context and Latino Political Development
Urban Affairs Review, January 2012, Volume 48:1:111-147 (with Benjamin Bishin and Daniel Stevens).
Political Behavior in the Context of Racial Diversity: The Case for Studying Local Politics
January 2011, 
PS: Political Science and Politics (with Antonio Rodriguez).
Battleground States versus Blackout States: The Behavioral Implications of Modern Presidential Campaigns
Journal of Politics, August 2007, Volume 69 (3):786-797 (with Jim Gimpel and Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz).
Immigration and the Future of Black Power in American Cities
Du Bois Review, (spring) March 2007, Volume 4 (1):79-96.

Allen J. Scott

For the last several years, Professor Scott’s research has been focused on issues of industrialization, urbanization, and regional development. This research has involved extensive theoretical and empirical work. On the theoretical front, Dr. Scott has written numerous pieces on the interrelations between industrial organization, technology, local labor markets, and location, with particular reference to the phenomenon of agglomeration economies. He also has carried out a large number of studies of individual industrial sectors in the United States, Europe and Asia.

Most recently, he has been researching the origins and development of high-technology industry in Southern California, and the policy predicaments thrown into relief by the recent crisis of the region’s aerospace-defense industry in the post-Cold War era. Professor Scott has served as a member of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Commission’s Aerospace Task Force. He also has been engaged in the formulation of a variety of economic development strategies for Southern California, including the setting up of an electric vehicle industry and an advanced ground transportation industry.

A Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and a Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellow, Dr. Scott has been a visiting scholar at Zhongshan University in the People’s Republic of China, the University of Paris, the University of Hong Kong and the University of Sao Paulo. From 1990 to 1995 he was director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at UCLA. He formerly served as Associate Dean of the School of Public Policy and Social Research.

Gary Orfield

Gary Orfield is Distinguished Research Professor of Education, Law, Political Science and Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests are in the study of civil rights, education policy, urban policy, and minority opportunity.

He was co-founder and director of the Harvard Civil Rights Project, and now serves as co-director of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA.

His central interest has been the development and implementation of social policy, particularly the impact of policy on equal opportunity for success in American society.

Orfield is a member of the National Academy of Education and has received numerous awards, including the Teachers College Medal, Social Justice Award of the AERA, the American Political Science Association Charles Merriam Award for his “contribution to the art of government through the application of social science research,” and honorary PhDs.

Orfield’s research includes 12 co-authored or co-edited books since 2004 and scores of articles and reports. In addition to scholarly work, he has served as expert witness or special master in more than three dozen class action civil rights cases, on school desegregation, housing discrimination and other issues, and as consultant to many school districts, federal, state and local governments, civil rights and teachers organizations. He and various collaborators have organized amicus briefs to the Supreme Court on the major school and affirmative action decisions over the last two decades.

Published books include:

  • The Walls Around College Opportunity: The Failure of Colorblind Policy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, (forthcoming 2022).
  • Accountability and Opportunity in Higher Education, ed. (with N. Hillman), Cambridge: Harvard Education Press, 2018.
  • Discrimination in Elite Public Schools: Investigating Buffalo, ed. (with J. Ayscue), New York: Teachers College Press, 2018.
  • Educational Delusions? Why Choice can Deepen Inequality and How to Make Schools Fair (with E. Frankenberg)Berkeley: University of California Press (2013)
  • The Resegregation of Suburban Schools: A Hidden Crisis in American Education (with E. Frankenberg), Cambridge: Harvard Education Press (2012)
  • Lessons In Integration: Realizing the Promise of Racial Diversity in America’s Public Schools (with E. Frankenberg), Charlottesville: UVA Press (2008)
  • Twenty-First Century Color Lines (with Andrew Grant-Thomas), Philadelphia: Temple University Press (2009)
  • Expanding Opportunity in Higher Education (with P. Gandara and C. Horn), Albany: SUNY Press (2006)
  • Latino Educational Opportunity: New Directions for Community Colleges, 133 (2) (with C. Horn and S. Flores), San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Wiley (2006)
  • School Resegregation: Must the South Turn Back? (with John Boger), Chapel Hill: UNC Press (2005)
  • Higher Education and the Color Line (with P. Marin and C. Horn), Cambridge: Harvard Education Press (2005)
  • Dropouts in America: Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis, Cambridge: Harvard Education Press (2004)
  • Religion Race and Justice in a Changing America, ed. (with H. Lebowitz), Century Foundation Press, 1999
  • Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education. New Press, 1996
  • The Closing Door: Conservative Policy and Black Opportunity (with C. Ashkinaze), Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991
  • Must We Bus? Segregated Schools and National Policy, Brookings Insitute, 1978.
  • Congressional Power: Congress and Social Change, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.

Brian D. Taylor

Brian Taylor is Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy, and Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA.

Professor Taylor’s research centers on transportation policy and planning – most of it conducted in close collaboration with his many exceptional students. His students have won dozens of national awards for their work, and today hold positions at the highest levels of planning analysis, teaching, and practice.

Professor Taylor explores how society pays for transportation systems and how these systems in turn serve the needs of people who – because of low income, disability, location, or age – have lower levels of mobility. Topically, his research examines travel behavior, transportation economics & finance, and politics & planning.

His research on travel behavior has examined (1) the social, economic, and spatial factors explaining public transit use, (2) ways to cost-effectively increase public transit use, (3) how and why travel patterns vary by race/ethnicity, sex, age, and income, (4) the emerging travel patterns teens and young adults, (5) gender divisions of household labor and travel, (6) the effect of travel experience on how people perceive opportunities, (7) the role of walking, waiting, and transferring on travel choices, and (8) the equity implications of new shared mobility systems.

A principal focus of his research is the politics of transportation economics & finance, including (1) alternative ways to evaluate the access and economic effects of traffic congestion on people, firms, and regional economies, (2) the history of freeway planning and finance, (3) emerging trends in pricing road use, (4) the equity of alternative forms of transportation pricing and finance, (5) linking of subsidies to public transit performance, and (6) measuring equity in public transit pricing and finance.

The politics of planning practice inform Professor Taylor’s teaching, which regularly includes courses on Transportation and Land Use: Urban Form, Public Transit and Shared Mobility, Transportation Economics, Finance, and Policy, courses in research design for planners, and, occasionally, the Comparative International Transportation Workshop. Prior to joining the UCLA faculty, Professor Taylor was a planning faculty member at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and before that he was a planner with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Some recent publications (current and former student co-authors listed in italics)

Cities, Roads, & Congestion

Taylor, Brian D., Eric A. Morris, and Jeffrey R. Brown. 2023. The Drive for Dollars: How Fiscal Politics Shaped Urban Freeways and Transformed American Cities. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 360 pages.

Venegas, Kimberly, Brian D. Taylor, Severin Martinez, and Yu Hong Hwang. 2023. “Take the High (Volume) Road: Analyzing the Safety and Speed Effects of High Traffic Volume Road Diets,Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, published online.

Ding, Hao and Brian D. Taylor. 2021. “Traffic Trumps All: Examining the Effect of Traffic Impact Analyses on Urban Housing,” Journal of Planning Literature, published online.

Taylor, Brian D. and Yu Hong Hwang.  2020.  “The Eighty-Five Percent Solution: A Historical Look at Crowdsourcing Speed Limits and the Question of SafetyTransportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board,2674(9):  346-357.

Osman, Taner, Trevor Thomas, Andrew Mondschein, and Brian D. Taylor.  2018.  “Does Traffic Congestion Influence the Location of New Business Establishments? An Analysis of the San Francisco Bay Area,” Urban Studies, 56(5):  1026-1041.

Thomas, Trevor, Andrew Mondschein, Taner Osman, and Brian D. Taylor.  2018.  “Not so fast? Examining neighborhood level effects of traffic congestion on job access,” Transportation Research, Part A: Policy and Practice, 113:  529-541.

Mondschein, Andrew and Brian D. Taylor.  2017.  “Is traffic congestion overrated? Examining the highly variable effects of congestion on travel and accessibility,” Journal of Transport Geography, 64: 65-76.

Public Transit & Shared Mobility

Wasserman, Jacob and Brian D. Taylor.  2023.  “State of the BART:  Analyzing the Determinants of Bay Area Rapid Transit Use in the 2010s,” Transportation Research, Part A:  Policy and Practice, 172: 103663.

King, Hannah, Jacob Wasserman, and Brian D. Taylor. 2023. “Terra Incognita:  Transit Agency Perspectives on Demand, Service, and Finance in the Age of COVID-19,” Transportation Research Record:  Journal of the Transportation Research Board.

Dai, Tianxing and Brian D. Taylor.  2022.  “Three’s a Crowd? Examining Evolving Public Transit Crowding Standards Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic Public TransportPublic Transport, Published online.

Speroni, Samuel, Brian D. Taylor, and Yu Hong Hwang.  2022.  “Pandemic Transit:  A National Look at the Shock, Adaptation, and Prospects for Recovery,” in Pandemic in The Metropolis: Transportation Impacts and Recovery. Basingstoke, United Kingdom:  Springer Nature.

Wasserman, Jacob and Brian D. Taylor.  2022.  “Transit Blues in the Golden State:  Regional Transit Ridership Trends in California,” Journal of Public Transportation, published online.

Brown, Anne, Evelyn Blumenberg, Brian D. Taylor, Kelcie Ralph, and Carole Turley Voulgaris.  2016.  “A Taste for Transit? Analyzing Public Transit Use Trends Among Youth,” Journal of Public Transportation, 19(1): 49-67.

Transportation Equity

Siddiq, Fariba and Brian D. Taylor. Forthcoming.  “A Gendered Perspective on Ride-Hail Use in Los Angeles, USA,” Transportation Research, Interdisciplinary Perspectives.

Dasmalchi, Eric and Brian D. Taylor.  2022.  “Examining Shifts in the Balance of Riders and Bus Service Before and During the Pandemic in Boston, Houston, and Los Angeles,” Findings, April.

Paul, Julene and Brian D. Taylor.  2022.  “Pandemic transit: Examining transit use changes and equity implications in Boston, Houston, and Los Angeles,” Transportation, published online.

Lederman, Jaimee, Anne Brown, Brian D. Taylor, and Martin Wachs.  2018.  “Arguing over Transportation Sales Taxes: An Analysis of Equity Debates in Transportation Ballot Measures,” Urban Affairs Review, 56(2):  640-670.

Smart, Michael J., Anne Brown, and Brian D. Taylor.  2017.  “Sex or Sexuality? Analyzing the Division of Labor and Travel in Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Households,” Travel Behaviour and Society, 6(2017): 75-82.

Taylor, Brian D. and Eric A. Morris. 2015. “Public transportation objectives and rider demographics: Are transit’s priorities poor public policy?Transportation, 42(2): 347-367.

Transportation, Land Use, & Urban Form

Gahbauer, John, Jacob L. Wasserman, Juan Matute, Alejandra Rios, and Brian D. Taylor.  Forthcoming.  “Using a Modified Delphi Approach to Explore California’s Possible Transportation and Land Use Futures,” Transportation Research Record:  Journal of the Transportation Research Board.

Siddiq, Fariba and Brian D. Taylor.  2021.  “Tools of the Trade? Assessing the Progress of Accessibility Measures for Planning Practice,” Journal of the American Planning Association, 87(4):  497-511.

Paul, Julene and Brian D. Taylor.  2021. “Who Lives in Transit-friendly Neighborhoods?  An Analysis of California Neighborhoods over Time,” Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 10:  100341.

Blumenberg, Evelyn, Anne Brown, Kelcie Ralph, Brian D. Taylor, and Carole Turley Voulgaris.  2019.  “A resurgence in urban living? Trends in residential location patterns of young and older adults since 2000,” Urban Geography, 40(9):  1375-1397.

Voulgaris, Carole Turley, Brian D. Taylor, Evelyn Blumenberg, Anne Brown, and Kelcie Ralph.  2017.  “Synergistic Neighborhood Relationships with Travel Behavior: An Analysis of Travel in 30,000 U.S.  Neighborhoods,” , 10(1):  437-461.

Ralph, Kelcie, Carole Turley Voulgaris, Anne Brown, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Brian D. Taylor.  2016.  “Millennials, built form, and travel: Insights from a nationwide typology of U.S. neighborhoods,” Journal of Transport Geography, 57: 218–226.

Transportation Policy & Finance

Siddiq, Fariba, Jacob Wasserman, Brian D. Taylor, and Samuel Speroni.  2023.  “Transit’s Financial Prognosis:  Findings from a Survey of U.S. Transit Systems during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Public Works Management & Policy.

King, Hannah, Natalie Amberg, Jacob L. Wasserman, Brian D. Taylor, and Martin Wachs. 2022. “LOST and Found: The Fall and Rise of Local Option Sales Taxes for Transportation in California amidst the Pandemic,” Pandemic in The Metropolis: Transportation Impacts and Recovery. Basingstoke, United Kingdom:  Springer Nature.

Brown, Anne, Jaimee Lederman, Brian D. Taylor, and Martin Wachs.  2020. “Analyzing voter support for California’s local option sales taxes for transportation,” Transportation, 48:  2103-2125.

Lederman, Jaimee, Anne Brown, Brian D. Taylor, and Martin Wachs.  2018.  “Lessons Learned from 40 Years of Local Option Transportation Sales Taxes in California,” Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2672(4): 13-22.

Lederman, Jaimee, Brian D. Taylor, and Mark Garrett.  2016.  “A Private Matter: The Implications of Privacy Regulations for Intelligent Transportation Systems,” Transportation Planning & Technology, 39(2):115-135.

Lederman, Jaimee, Mark Garrett, and Brian D. Taylor.  2016.  “Fault-y Reasoning: Navigating the Liability Terrain in Intelligent Transportation Systems,” Public Works Management & Policy, 21(1): 5-27.

Travel Behavior

Morris, Eric A., Samuel Speroni, and Brian D. Taylor.  2023.  “Going Nowhere Fast:  Are Changing Activity Patterns Behind Falling Personal Travel? Journal of Transport Geography, published online.

Manville, Michael, Brian D. Taylor, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Andrew Schouten.  2022.  “Vehicle access and falling transit ridership: evidence from Southern California,” Transportation, published online.

Schouten, Andrew, Brian D. Taylor, and Evelyn Blumenberg.  2021. “Who’s on Board?  Examining the Changing Characteristics of Transit Riders Using Latent Profile Analysis,” ,” Transportation Research Record:  Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2675(7):  1-10.

Schouten, Andrew, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Brian D. Taylor.  2021.  “Rating the Composition: Deconstructing the Demand-Side Effects on Transit Use Changes in California,” Travel Behaviour & Society, 25:  18-26.

Turley, Carole Voulgaris, Michael J. Smart, and Brian D. Taylor.  2017.  “Tired of Commuting? Relationships among Journeys to School, Sleep, and Exercise among American Teenagers,” Journal of Planning Education and Research, 39(2):  142-154.

Blumenberg, Evelyn, Kelcie Ralph, Michael Smart, and Brian D. Taylor.  2016.  “Who Knows About Kids These Days? Analyzing the Determinants of Youth and Adult Mobility in the U.S. between 1990 and 2009,” Transportation Research, Part A: Policy and Practice, 93:  39-54.  (Authors listed alphabetically).

Susanne Lohmann

Susanne Lohmann is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and Director of the Jacob Marschak Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Mathematics in the Behavioral Sciences at UCLA.

Professor Lohmann received her Ph.D. in economics and political economy from Carnegie Mellon University in 1991. She taught at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business before joining UCLA in 1993. Professor Lohmann was John M. Olin Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University; Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, also at Carnegie Mellon University; James and Doris McNamara Fellow at Stanford University; John M. Olin Fellow at the University of Southern California; Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; and Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

Professor Lohmann’s articles on collective action and central banking have appeared in American Economic Review, American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, World Politics,International Organization and other leading social science journals. Her current research focus is the political economy of research universities and higher education. She is completing a book titled How Universities Think: The Hidden Work of a Complex Institution, which is under contract with Cambridge University Press.

Professor Lohmann teaches courses on ethics and governance. Her online course on “Diversity, Disagreement, and Democracy” embeds mini games of cooperation, competition, coordination and collaboration in a massively multiplayer game of life. She is the recipient of two teaching awards.

Daniel J.B. Mitchell

Daniel J.B. Mitchell is Ho-su Wu professor at the Anderson Graduate School of Management and the School of Public Affairs, U.C.L.A. Within the latter school, he chaired the Department of Policy Studies during 1996-97. Prof. Mitchell was formerly director of the U.C.L.A. Institute of Industrial Relations (1979-90) and continues to serve on the Institute’s advisory committee.

During Phase II of the federal wage/price controls program of the early 1970s, Prof. Mitchell was chief economist of the Pay Board, the agency that administered wage controls. He was twice associated with the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., including a stint as a senior fellow in the economic studies program (1978-79), and participated in several Brookings-sponsored research projects. Professional activities have included memberships on the Executive Boards of the Industrial Relations Research Association (both national and Southern California), the North American Economics and Finance Association, and the Institute of Industrial Relations Association. Prof. Mitchell is the immediate past president of the North American Economics and Finance Association. He has also served on the nominating committee of the American Economic Association and on the editorial boards of various academic journals. He is editor of a book series on workplace studies published by M.E. Sharpe, Inc. and began a term as co-editor of the journal Industrial Relations in 1997.

Prof. Mitchell regularly served as a member of the Human Resource Forecast Panel while it operated at the Conference Board and later at U.C.L.A. He is a member of the International Industrial Relations Association and chairs one of its study groups (Pay Systems). At UCLA, he was co-director and then director (1999-2000) of the UCLA Anderson Business Forecasting Project. As a faculty member at UCLA, he has created a course on “California Policy Issues” (now co-taught with former presidential candidate and Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis), now a core course of the minor in Public Affairs. Prof. Mitchell has served as a consultant to the Congressional Budget Office, the Federal Reserve Board, the President’s Council on Wage and Price Stability, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the International Labour Organisation. His publications have generally been in the areas of wage determination, wage-price controls, concession bargaining, flexible pay plans, non-wage employee benefits, use of labor-market data, labor standards in international trade, and other aspects of labor-market analysis. Prof. Mitchell is the author of Pensions, Politics, and the Elderly: Historic Social Movements and Their Lessons for Our Aging Society (M.E. Sharpe, 2000).

The book uses California’s colorful experience with “pensionite” movements of the state’s seniors during the period from the 1920s through the 1940s to draw implications for the upcoming retirement of the baby boom. Prof. Mitchell has two children and resides in Santa Monica, California with his wife Alice.

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

“Pensions, Politics, and the Elderly”
ME Sharpe, 2000

Aaron Panofsky

Aaron Panofsky is a Professor in Public Policy and the Institute for Society and Genetics. Prior to joining UCLA in January of 2008, he was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Scholar at UC Berkeley from 2006 through 2007. Panofsky received his Ph.D. in sociology from New York University in 2006.

Panofsky’s main research interest is in the sociology of science and knowledge with a special focus on genetics. He recently published his first book, Misbehaving Science: Controversy and the Development of Behavior Genetics (Chicago, 2014), is an analysis of the causes and consequences of controversy in the field of behavioral genetics. A second major project is investigating how patient advocate groups are seeking to affect the research process in the medical genetics of rare disorders. Of particular interest are the means by which patient advocates and scientists can form successful, mutually beneficial collaborative partnerships. These and other projects fit with his abiding science policy interests in the governance of science and technology and the relationship between expertise and democracy.

Follow him on Twitter

Mark A. Peterson

A specialist on American national institutions, much of Professor Peterson’s scholarship focuses on the Presidency, Congress, interest groups, and public opinion, evaluating interactions among them, and their implications for policy making, both within the general domain of domestic policy and with special attention to national health care policy, Medicare reform, and HIV/AIDS politics and policy.  He also studies the role of evidence in policy making, including the contextual factors that promote or inhibit its influence.

He has written extensively on how Congress responds to presidential legislative initiatives, exploring how different political, economic, and institutional settings affect coalition building, promote inter-institutional conflict or cooperation, influence the president’s legislative performance, and establish the baseline for assessing the performance of individual leaders (including Legislating Together: The White House and Capital Hill from Eisenhower to Reagan, Harvard University Press). He has also investigated the ways in which presidents use relationships with organized interests to promote their administration’s political or programmatic agendas, based on the presidential objectives and strategic calculations.

As a participant in the Annenberg Institutions of American Democracy Project, with Public Policy Department colleague Joel Aberbach he co-chaired the Commission on the Executive Branch and co-edited the volume it produced on the politics and performance of the presidency and bureaucracy (Institutions of American Democracy: The Executive Branch, Oxford University Press), which won the Richard E. Neustadt Award from the Presidential Research section of the American Political Science Association.  He also contributed to its study of public and elite opinion on the performance of American institutions (Institutions of American Democracy: A Republic Divided, Oxford University Press).

In addition, specific to the domain of health and health care policy, he edited Healthy Markets?  The New Competition in Medical Care, Duke University Press; and co-edited both Uncertain Times:  Kenneth Arrow and the Changing Economics of Health Care, Duke University Press) and the four-volume edited series Health Politics and Policy (Sage), as well as edited the special health policy journal issues, The Managed Care Backlash and Who Shall Lead?

Much of his most recent scholarship has linked these themes and extensive original research to produce a book manuscript entitled “American Sisyphus: Health Care and the Challenge of Transformative Policymaking.” Encompassing the last 100 years, it examines how recognized problems in the health care system, the influence of public opinion, transformation of the interest group community, institutional dynamics in Congress, changes in the context and demands of political leadership, various dimensions of social learning by policy makers, and strategic and tactical choices by presidents both thwarted health care reform in the past and ultimately made possible the enactment of President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, but in a context that also primed the challenge of the law before the U.S. Supreme Court and prompted enduring partisan attacks on its implementation and continuation.

Professor Peterson was a founding team member of the UCLA-based multidisciplinary Blue Sky Health Initiative to transform the U.S. health and health care system, which helped advise Congress on the inclusion of disease prevention and health promotion strategies in the Affordable Care Act.  Previously, as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, he served as a Legislative Assistant for Health Policy in the Office of U.S. Senator Tom Daschle.  During 2000-2003 he was on the Study Panel on Medicare and Markets organized by the National Academy of Social Insurance.

From 1993 to 2002, Professor Peterson was the editor of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, a leading bimonthly scholarly journal in the field. He later chaired the journal’s Executive Committee, on which he remains a member, and also served on the Board of Editors of PS: Political Science & Politics and the Board of Editors of the Journal of Politics.  He has often been interviewed for television, radio, and print media stories, including for CBS News, National Public Radio and state public radio networks, CNN Money.Com, local television in Boston and Los Angeles, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Christian Science Monitor, San Diego Union Tribune, Arizona Republic, Milwaukee Journal SentinelAtlanta Constitution, U.S. News & World Report, CQ Weekly, The Hill, American Medical News, Internal Medicine News, The Lancet Oncology, and newspapers and broadcast news in Latin America, Europe, and Asia.

Professor Peterson has been an elected member of the Council of the American Political Science Association (2008-2010) and a member of its Administrative Committee, a founding member of the Association’s Organized Section on Health Politics and Policy, and was elected President of its Organized Section on Public Policy.  He has served on various committees for the American Political Science Association, Midwest Political Science Association, the Western Political Science Association, and AcademyHealth.  He chaired the National Advisory Committees for both the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Scholars in Health Policy Research program and its Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization (HCFO) program, and was a member of the National Advisory Committees for the Foundation’s  Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research Program and Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico.  He is an elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance.  Other honors include the Pi Sigma Alpha Award from the Midwest Political Science Association, the E. E. Schattschneider Award from the American Political Science Association, the Richard E. Neustadt Award from the President and Executive Politics Section of the APSA, and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research.

At UCLA, he is Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and Law, and has twice been the Chair of the Department of Public Policy.  He is a Faculty Associate of the Center for Health Policy Research, the Center for Healthier Children, Families, and Communities, and the Institute for Society & Genetics; member of the Policy Impact Core for the Center for HIV Identification, Prevention, and Treatment Services; and is on the Internal Advisory Board for the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at UCLA.  He previously served on the faculty boards of the Center for Policy Research on Aging, the Institute for Social Research, and the Center for American Politics and Public Policy.  He is also currently a member of the University of California’s Academic Senate Health Care Task Force and the Academic Advisory Committee for the University of California Washington Center (UC in DC), and was on the University of California Office of the President’s Health Benefits Working Group.

Prior to coming to UCLA, he was Professor of Public Affairs, Political Science, and Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, and Henry La Barre Jayne Associate Professor of Government at Harvard University.

 

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

American Sisyphus: Health Care and the Challenge of Transformative Policymaking.
Mark A. Peterson.  Book manuscript in progress.

Reversing Course on Obamacare:  Why Not Another Medicare Catastrophic? 
Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 43(4) (August 2018): 605-650.

In the Shadow of Politics: The Pathways of Research Evidence to Health Policy Making. 
Special Issue on Policy Analysis and the Politics of Health Policy.   Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 43(3) (June 2018): 341-376.

The Third Rail of Politics The Rise and Fall of Medicare’s Untouchability
Mark A. Peterson.  In Alan Cohen, David Colby, Keith Wailoo, and Julian Zelizer, Medicare and Medicaid at Fifty.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Interest Groups and the Executive Branch
Mark A. Peterson.  In Burdett A. Loomis, ed., Guide to Interest Groups and Lobbying in the United States.  Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2011.

Who Wants Presidential Supremacy? Findings from the Institutions of American Democracy Project
Joel D. Aberbach, Mark A. Peterson, and Paul J. Quirk.  Presidential Studies Quarterly 37 (September 2007): 515-53.

It Was a Different Time: Obama and the Unique Opportunity for Health Care Reform
Mark A. Peterson.  Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 36(3) (June 2011): 429-436.

The Ideological and Partisan Polarization of Health Care Reform and Tax Policy
Mark A. Peterson.  Tax Law Review 65(4), 2012: 627-667.

Institutions of American Democracy: A Republic Divided
Annenberg Democracy Project.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Health Politics and Policy, Four-Volume Set
Sue Tolleson-Rinehart and Mark A. Peterson, Editors.
Volume 1.  Defining Health Systems: Path Dependence and Policy Emergence
Volume 2. Tensions in Health Policy: Ethics, Interests, and the Public
Volume 3. Health Systems in Comparative Perspective
Volume 4. The Contemporary Politics of Health System Reform
London: Sage Publications, 2010.

Legislating Together: The White House and Capitol Hill from Eisenhower to Reagan
Mark A. Peterson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990.

 

Fernando Torres-Gil

Fernando M. Torres-Gil’s multifaceted career spans the academic, professional, and policy arenas.  He is a Professor of Social Welfare and Public Policy at UCLA, an Adjunct Professor of Gerontology at USC, and Director of the UCLA Center for Policy Research on Aging.  He has served as Associate Dean and Acting Dean at the UCLA School of Public Affairs, and most recently Chair of the Social Welfare Department.  He has written six books and over l00 publications, including The New Aging: Politics and Change in America (1992) and Lessons from Three Nations, Volumes I and II (2007).  His academic contributions have earned him membership in the prestigious Academies of Public Administration, Gerontology and Social Insurance.  His research spans important topics of health and long-term care, disability, entitlement reform, and the politics of aging.

Professor Torres-Gil is more than an academic.  He has an impressive portfolio of public service and national and international recognition as a leading spokesperson on demographics, aging, and public policy.  He earned his first presidential appointment in 1978 when President Jimmy Carter appointed him to the Federal Council on Aging.  He was selected as a White House Fellow and served under Joseph Califano, then Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), and continued as a Special Assistant to the subsequent Secretary of HEW, Patricia Harris.  He was appointed (with Senate Confirmation) by President Bill Clinton as the first-ever U.S. Assistant Secretary on Aging in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). As the Clinton Administration’s chief advocate on aging, Torres-Gil played a key role in promoting the importance of the issues of aging, long-term care and disability, community services for the elderly, and baby boomer preparation for retirement.  He served under HHS Secretary Donna Shalala, managing the Administration on Aging and organizing the 1995 White House Conference on Aging, in addition to serving as a member of the President’s Welfare Reform Working Group.

In 2010 he received his third presidential appointment (with Senate Confirmation) when President Barack Obama appointed him as Vice Chair of the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency that reports to the Congress and White House on federal matters related to disability policy.  During his public service in Washington, D.C., he also served as Staff Director of the U.S. House Select Committee on Aging under his mentor, Congressman Edward R. Roybal.

At the local level, Torres-Gil has served as the Vice President of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission and a member of the Harbor and Taxi Commissions for the city of Los Angeles.  He currently serves Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as an appointed member of the Board of Airport Commissioners.  At the state level, he was appointed by former Governor Gray Davis to the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Task Force on Veterans’ Homes and by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as a delegate to the 2005 White House Conference on Aging.

He continues to provide important leadership in philanthropy and non-profit organizations as a board member of the AARP Foundation, and he is a former board member of The California Endowment, National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California and the Los Angeles Chinatown Service Center.

Dr. Torres-Gil was born and raised in Salinas, California, the son of migrant farm workers.  He earned his A.A. in Political Science at Hartnell Community College (1968), a B.A. with honors in Political Science from San Jose State University (1970), and an M.S.W. (1972) and Ph.D. (1976) in Social Policy, Planning and Research from the Heller Graduate School in Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University.

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

California, Where Brown and Gray America Collide
TIME magazine, June 24, 2015

Policy, Politics and Aging: Crossroads in the 1990s
Torres-Gil, F. (1998) in J.S. Steckenrider and T.M. Parrott (Eds.), New Directions in Old-Age Politics, Albany: State University of New York Press, 75-87

The New Aging: Politics and Change in America
Torres-Gil, F. The New Aging: Politics and Change in America. Westport, CT: Auburn House, 1992

The Emerging Nexus of Aging and Diversity: Implications for Public Policy and Entitlement Reform
Torres-Gil, F. and Bickson-Moga, K., Elder’s Advisor: The Journal of Elder Law and Post-Retirement Planning, Vol. 4, No. 1, Summer 2002

Social Policy and Aging
Torres-Gil, F. and Villa, V., in J. Midgley, M. Tracy and M. Livermore (Eds.), The Handbook of Social Policy, 2000, Sage Publications

The Art of Aging Well: Lessons From Three Nations
Carmel, S., C. Morse, and F. Torres-Gil (Eds.). Volume I. Amityville, New York: Baywood Publishing Company, Inc., In Press

The Art of Caring for Older Adults
Carmel, S., C. Morse, and F. Torres-Gil (Eds.). Volume II. Amityville, New York: Baywood Publishing Company, Inc., In Press