Spring 2012 Workshops:

The UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs is committed to incorporating social justice in its teaching, research, and service. Graduate education in public policy, social work, and urban planning seeks to equip public sector policy makers with the relevant analytic tools to deal with a rapidly changing world.  A social justice perspective - a lens on the systemic, institutional and structural conditions that constrain individual and community development - is a necessary and underdeveloped analytical tool in urban and social policy curricula.

The workshop series is designed to complement students' classroom education by providing them with practical training and the necessary fluency on a variety of social justice issues vital for their real world work as they begin their careers as public service managers and leaders.

 

To register: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/sjworkshops

 

April 30:  12-1:30 pm (lunch provided) 

It’s a Dam Shame: A Community Defends its Home

featuring: Ikal Angelei  

2012 Goldman Environmental Prize winner
Executive Director, Friends of Lake Turkana

Winner of the 2012 Goldman Environmental Prize, and fresh from her appearance as a keynote speaker at the Earth Day celebration on the National Mall in Washington, Kenyan-born activist Ikal Angelei will discuss her fight against a mega-dam that threatens her remote community on the shores of Kenya’s Lake Turkana.

Ikal Angelei is a 31-year-old Kenyan born activist and Executive Director of Friends of Lake Turkana. Through her organization, she works to defend land and natural resource rights of poor and marginalized people, and advocate for their inclusion in governance and decision-making about development of territory.

She has been recognized internationally for her organization’s courageous fight against the Gibe III Dam, which would have cut off water supply for a half million farmers, herders and fisherman, forever altering her community’s way of life. Angelei brought together Lake Turkana’s divided and marginalized indigenous communities to fight against the mounting environmental and social implications of the Gibe III Dam. 

Please join her as she discusses her experience as a young environmental and social justice activist.

May 1: 5:30-8:00 pm (dinner provided) 

Reflections on International Social Justice: From Defending Place to Reclaiming Rights

featuring: Steve Commins

Lecturer, Urban Planning
Strategy Manager, Fragile States, International Medical Corps   

International social justice means reclaiming 'development' as a process concerned about people, power and politics.

This session will explore some of the foundational elements of International Social Justice.  It will be proposed (and questioned) whether ISJ is grounded in certain normative principles, such as those set out in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the Convention to Eliminate Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).  This approach focuses on the role and function of the nation state can be assessed in part in terms of whether that State is primarily in support of and in implementation of these rights, or opposed to and in violation of these rights. 

However, the 'social' aspect of social justice is partly manifested in the actions of citizens within and between states, such as the movements of adivasis and dalits in India, or the landless and excluded groups in Brazil. Questions of social justice also can reanimate attention to the rights of people as a foundation for policy rather than a system that is based primarily on welfare and charity (as important as these are) values.

Steve Commins is Strategy Manager, Fragile States, International Medical Corps, the co-founder of the Health and Fragile States Network, as well as a consultant on humanitarian emergencies for World Vision International, and disasters and safety nets for the World Bank in Bangladesh. At UCLA, Dr. Commins teaches courses in regional and international development, and the role of Non-Governmental Organizations. His current courses are on urbanization in developing countries, NGOs, and disaster management.

 

May 15: 5:30-8:00 pm (dinner provided) 

Why Progressives Lose the Public Square: Strategic Communications & American’s Policy Preferences

featuring: Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr.

Dean & Meyer and Renee Luskin Chair
Professor of Public Policy and Political Science
UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs  

In this session led by Dean Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., students will come away with an understanding of the relationship between social justice frames and mass policy preferences.  Relying on research from the cognitive, policy and social sciences, students will analyze how public discourse is framed and the concomitant effects on policy thinking. Students will work through real world examples and learn how advocates, researchers, policymakers, and elected officials utilize (or fail to utilize) framing as a tool of strategic communications to gain support for their preferred policy agendas.  

 

May 22:  

Bias, Baggage and the Great Beyond

featuring: Katrina Browne & Juanita Brown  

Producers, Traces of the Trade
Board Members, Tracing Center  

Lecture: 12-1:30 pm

Workshop: 5:30-8:00 pm

Please join collaborators Katrina Browne and Juanita Brown as they openly discuss what keeps getting in the way of this nation moving effectively through the thicket of race, even in liberal and progressive settings.  Encouraging participation from all backgrounds and ideologies attendees will learn how to become more effective practitioners in their applied profession.

How does unconscious racial bias show up in our thoughts and actions?  How do bias and baggage—ours and that of others—impact our work in social welfare and public policy institutions, keeping racial disparities and structural racism in place?  How do they impact, for example, the school to prison pipeline?

New course offerings for 2011-2012:

• Fall 2011 to Spring 2012: Theory of Social Work Practice in Organizations, Communities and Policy Setting with Professor Alfreda Iglehart, Professor Bridget Freisthler, and Field Faculty Toby Hur.
• Winter 2012: Critical Race Studies with Professor Marie Kennedy
• Winter 2012: The Informal City with Professor Vinit Mukhija
• Spring 2012: Environmental Justice and Emergent Paradigms: from Sustainability to Survivability with Professor Susanna Hecht
• Spring 2012: Teaching for Social Justice: The Role of the University with Professor Susanne Lohmann

New course offerings for 2010-2011:

• Winter 2011: Critical Race Studies with Professor Marie Kennedy
• Spring 2011: Strategic Communications, Social Justice and Public Policy with Dean Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr.
• Spring 2011: Affordable and Fair Housing in Transit Oriented Development with Professor Paul Ong

 

Additional Course Offerings:

Public Policy

PP 225: Education Policy and Educational Inequality

PP M212: Child Welfare Policy

PP M213: Mental Health Policy

PP M214: Poverty, Poor, and Welfare Reform

PP M216: Youth Policy

PP M248: Toleration, Pluralism, and Diversity

PP M253: LGBT Law and Public Policy Research

PP M261: Aging Policy, Elderly and Families

PP 271: Urban Poverty, Workforce Development, and Public Policy

PP M289A/B: Immigration, Racial Change, and Education in 21st-Century Metropolis

PP 290: Framing Social Justice: Strategic Communications & Public Policy

PP 294: Education Markets and Education Policy
PP M295: Law and Poor

 

Social Welfare

SW 225B: Policy Implementation and Evaluation

SW 230C: Theory and Methods of Direct Social Work Practice with Individuals, Families, and Groups in Multicultural Communities

SW M290J: Child Welfare Policy

SW M290K: Mental Health Policy

SW M290L: Poverty, Poor, and Welfare Reform

SW M290N: Public Policy for Children and Youth

SW M290P: Aging Policy, Elderly and Families

SW M290Q: Social Welfare Policy in Asian American Communities

M290R: Law and Poor

 

Urban Planning

UP 217A: Community Scholars

UP 219: Poverty and Inequality

UP 229: Critical Race Studies

UP M230: Introduction to Regional Planning

UP 234A: Development Theory

UP 234B: Urbanization in the Developing World 

UP 236A: Theories of Regional Economic Development

UP 237A: Sectoral Analysis

UP 237B: Urban and Regional Economic Development Applications

UP 237C: Southern California Regional Economy

UP 239: Urban Labor Markets and Public Policy

UP 244: Urban Poverty and Planning

UP 261: Land Use Planning- Processes, Critiques and Innovation

UP 271: Community Economic Development

UP 269: Environmental Justice

 

Update 4/27/2011: Luskin School announces faculty grant awardees for development of social justice courses.