Inaugurating the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin
[View the story “Challenge Ineq” on Storify]
New Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy to Launch with Series of Events Feb. 4-5 Inauguration will include panels with scholars, activists and organizers, plus a Luskin Lecture and special screening featuring David Simon, writer and creator of “The Wire” and “Treme”
By Stan Paul
A new kind of Institute has come to UCLA.
Led by Ananya Roy, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs professor and center director, the newly established Institute on Inequality and Democracy will launch on Feb. 4-5 with two days of events at UCLA and the Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles.
“We analyze and transform the divides and dispossessions of our times, in the university and in our cities, across global South and global North,” is stated as part of the mission of the Institute which will encompass multidisciplinary, collaborative work led by UCLA faculty. Planned areas of work include: multi-disciplinary research collaboratives to advance knowledge about key social problems; contributing to policy frameworks via activist practices and community organizing; graduate student working groups that foster connections across and beyond UCLA; and offering intellectual space for debates within progressive thought.
From discussions on “Markets, Race, and the Aftermath of Slavery” to “Decolonizing the University,” the upcoming launch, titled “Urban Color-Lines,” will serve as an introduction to key themes to be explored at the new Institute based in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and made possible by a generous donation from Meyer and Renee Luskin.
Daytime events for both days will be held at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and will include eminent UCLA scholars as well as intellectuals and activists who are actively working on human rights and social justice issues — locally, nationally and internationally.
Day 1, Feb. 4
First-day events begin at 11 a.m. at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, room 2355, with Why Think About Inequality & Democracy Together? Luskin Interim Dean Lois Takahashi will provide welcome remarks followed by Roy’s introduction of the Institute and events.
Markets, Race, and the Aftermath of Slavery
11:30 a.m., Room 2355, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs
Chair: Leobardo Estrada, Chair, Academic Senate, UCLA
Speaker: Cheryl Harris, UCLA School of Law and Chair, African American Studies
The Right to the City: From South to North
1 p.m., Room 2355, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs
Chair: Chris Tilly, Urban Planning, UCLA
Speakers:
Toussaint Losier, Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and co- founder, Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign
Raquel Rolnik, Urban Planning, University of São Paulo, Brazil
Richard Pithouse, Unit for Humanities at Rhodes University, South Africa
Gautam Bhan, Indian Institute for Human Settlements, India
Day 1 Evening
The Feb. 4 evening presentations and performances will be held from 6 to 8:30 p.m. (with a reception from 6 to 6:30 p.m.) at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, 100 N. Central Ave., Los Angeles. Round-trip transportation from UCLA will be provided.
The program includes:
Black, Brown, and Banished: Ending Urban Displacement in 21st Century Democracies
Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles
Performances:
Bodies on the Line: Artists Fight Back
Curator: Dan Froot, 501 (see three) ARTS and UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance
Dance by Bernard Brown
Dance/Spoken Word by Sandy Vazquez and Ericka Jones
Excerpts from Oral Histories of Displaced Angelenos, by Dan Froot with Dorothy Dubrule
Eviction/Action:
Moderators:
Laura Pulido, American Studies and Ethnicity, USC, and Ananya Roy, Director, Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin
Speakers:
Ashraf Cassiem, Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, South Africa
Willie (JR) Fleming, Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign
Patricia Hill, Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign
Pete White, LA Community Action Network
Day 2, Feb. 5:
What Do We Hope to Achieve Today and Now?
10:15 a.m., Room 2355, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs
Ananya Roy, Director, Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin
Debtors’ Prisons and Debtors’ Unions: Direct Action in Finance Capitalism
10:30 a.m., Room 2355, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs
Chair: Robin D.G. Kelley, African American Studies and History, UCLA
Speaker: Hannah Appel, Anthropology, UCLA
Decolonizing the University
Noon, Room 2355, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs
Moderator: Ananya Roy, Director, Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin
Speakers:
Gaye Theresa Johnson, African American Studies and Chicana/o Studies, UCLA
Camalita Naicker, Political and International Studies, Rhodes University, South Africa
Carlos Vainer, Chair, Forum of Science and Culture, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Marques Vestal, History, UCLA
Day 2 Evening program (7-9 p.m.)
The Audacity of Despair
James Bridges Theater, UCLA
Screening: Show Me a Hero
Keynote Lecture: David Simon, writer and creator, “The Wire,” “Treme,” and “Show Me a Hero”
Information and Registration
Registration, a detailed program of events, and more about the Institute may be found at: challengeinequality.luskin.ucla.edu
Challenging Inequality UCLA Luskin Professor Ananya Roy Has a ‘Clear Mandate’ for Social Justice; New Luskin Institute: Teaching, Scholarship and New Center to Focus on Inequality and Democracy
By Stan Paul
On day one of teaching her first UCLA undergraduate course, “Democracy and Inequality,” award-winning scholar, author and teacher Ananya Roy wasted no time getting right to a key point. Roy wanted to convey to students that “unprecedented forms of income inequality currently afoot in the United States have been produced through policies,” including taxation.
Roy describes her course, open to undergrads and grad students, as “taking up the case of persistent inequality in liberal democracies,” as well as covering key frameworks and methodologies for understanding and analyzing poverty and inequality. In doing so, she says that the already very popular course examines forms of action — from the role of government to social movements — that seek to intervene in such problems.
“It is important for us to recognize that various forms of inequality, be it income inequality or racial inequality, have been constructed and maintained,” said Roy, who joined UCLA in 2015 after many years on the faculty at UC Berkeley. And, her own discipline is not free of culpability, according to Roy. Urban planning, she said, is also “complicit in the production of racial inequality,” citing redlining and other forms of spatial segregation as examples.
But, Roy said, “The good news is these forms of inequality can also be challenged and tackled.”
At UC Berkeley, Roy held the Distinguished Chair in Global Poverty and Practice. Her course on global poverty regularly drew hundreds of undergrads each year, and, in 2010, The New Yorker called the advocate of public higher education “one of Berkeley’s star teachers.” The dynamic instructor, who also uses social media to encourage her students to think about their participation in public debate, also earned the Distinguished Teaching Award, the university’s highest faculty teaching honor, and the Distinguished Faculty Mentorship Award.
Roy is also a prolific author. Her book “Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development” won the 2011 Paul Davidoff Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, given for books that promote participatory planning and positive social change. Other titles include “City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the Politics of Poverty” and, most recently, “Territories of Poverty: Rethinking North and South.”
Roy recently joined an international group of scholars as the co-editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR), published by Wiley-Blackwell.
Launch of New Center on Inequality and Democracy
In addition to teaching as a professor of Urban Planning and Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, Roy will serve as the inaugural director of the new Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin. The center will be launched with two days of events, Feb. 4-5.
Roy has an ambitious — and still developing — task at UCLA, Luskin and the wider community. At the new institute, based within the Luskin School, she will oversee a multifaceted program of research, training and public scholarship concerned with both the current moment of inequality as well long histories of oppression and marginalization. With research interests ranging from social theory to comparative urban studies, Roy has dedicated much of her scholarship to understanding and analyzing persistent poverty in a prosperous but unequal world.
“The institute’s work is just getting started,” said Roy, but it will be quite different from similar centers and institutes at other universities. Key themes of the institute will be racial justice — and not only in economic terms — and thinking across the global north and south as opposed to focusing only on the U.S. or other countries. And, while the center will seek to “move the policy needle,” Roy said social movements will provide a guide as to how such change can take place.
“We recognize social change happens through the hard work of organizing and mobilizing. We also recognize social movements as producing key ideas, frameworks and approaches for diagnosing the public problems of our times.”
Another goal of the center is to create a space for debate. “I think the point we want to make is that it is necessary to have an intellectual space for debate within the left, within progressive and radical thought and action,” Roy said. “We hope the institute will be such a space. And Los Angeles is the ideal setting for such ambitions.
“It is a great privilege to be able to establish and direct this institute, to do so with a clear mandate for social justice, to do so at one of the world’s great public universities, and in a city that manifests enduring inequalities but is also home to inspiring forms of activism and mobilization.”
To learn more about the new Institute please visit the website at: http://challengeinequality.luskin.ucla.edu/
More about Ananya Roy
Born in Calcutta, India, Ananya Roy earned her bachelor’s degree at Mills College in Oakland, California, and her master’s and doctoral degrees at UC Berkeley. At UCLA Luskin, Roy holds the Meyer and Renee Luskin Chair in Inequality and Democracy and faculty appointments in Urban Planning and Social Welfare.
For a look at Professor Roy’s work in critical poverty studies, see #GlobalPOV: http://blumcenter.berkeley.edu/GlobalPov/
Ananya Roy to direct new UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy Appointment effective July 1, 2015.
International development scholar Ananya Roy will lead a new institute examining inequality and democracy at UCLA Luskin as its inaugural director, Dean Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., announced today. Roy’s appointment is effective July 1, 2015.
Roy’s charge at the new institute will be to oversee a multifaceted program of research, training, and public outreach operating at the nexus of democracy, social justice and governance/political participation. The project is a major initiative of UCLA Luskin’s five-point strategic plan, adopted in the wake of the $50 million naming gift from Meyer and Renee Luskin to UCLA’s School of Public Affairs in 2011.
Roy comes to UCLA from the University of California, Berkeley, where she served as a professor of city and regional planning and distinguished chair in global poverty and practice. She was also the education director at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. In 2010 The New Yorker called her “one of Berkeley’s star teachers,” and in 2006 she earned the Distinguished Teaching Award, the college’s highest faculty teaching honor, and the Distinguished Faculty Mentorship Award.
“I am thrilled to welcome Ananya to UCLA Luskin as the head of the institute,” Dean Gilliam said. “Her creativity, collaborative spirit and impeccable academic credentials are an exact match for the positive change inherent in this new endeavor, and I know she will serve as an inspiration to our faculty and students.”
With research interests ranging from social theory to comparative urban studies, Roy has dedicated much of her scholarship to exploring and understanding the formation of geopolitical hierarchies. Her book Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development won the 2011 Paul Davidoff Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, given for books that promote participatory planning and positive social change. She is also the author of City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the Politics of Poverty and co-editor of Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, South Asia, and Latin America; The Practice of International Health; and Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global.
Projects under her direction have received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Social Sciences Research Council, the Ford Foundation, USAID and others. Roy’s service on editorial boards includes the publications Public Culture and Territory, Politics and Governance, among many others.
As the institute builds an interdisciplinary approach to solving societal problems and leveraging the work of our three departments and across the campus, Roy’s previous experience at the University of California will play a key role. As the founding chair of Berkeley’s undergraduate program in global poverty and practice, she led a field of study that brings together hundreds of students from over 30 majors to understand the challenges of global poverty through creativity and practical experience. She also served as chair of the urban studies major, which takes a holistic approach to designing a new, humane approach to urbanism for a global populace.
At UCLA Luskin, Roy will hold an endowed chair provided by Meyer and Renee Luskin. Born in Calcutta, she earned her master’s and doctoral degrees at Berkeley and took her bachelor’s at Mills College.
