Segura Elected to National Academy of Sciences

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Gary M. Segura, professor of public policy, political science and Chicano and Chicana Studies at UCLA, has been elected a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. Segura is one of four UCLA faculty members newly elected to the academy in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. The four UCLA scholars will be among 120 U.S. and 23 international members who will be inducted into the Washington, D.C.-based organization in April 2024. “The Luskin School is extremely proud of Gary’s election to the National Academy of Sciences,” said UCLA Luskin Interim Dean Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris. “This is a top honor! He is joining a very elite group of the best and the brightest in the United States and the world.” Segura’s work has focused on issues of political representation and social cleavages, the domestic politics of wartime public opinion and the politics of America’s growing Latino minority. During his tenure as dean of the Luskin School from 2017 to 2022, he co-founded the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, which later became the Latino Policy & Politics Institute. Segura was recommended for inclusion in the social and political sciences section, one of the organization’s 31 disciplinary areas, said Susan R. Wessler, home secretary of the academy, which was established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. Wessler said the new inductees will join in the work of the academy. “We are an active, working academy that addresses important matters in science and advises the nation on problems where scientific insights are critical,” she said.

Read the full story.

 

Luskin School Reaches Top 10 Among Public Affairs Schools Nationwide Subcategory rankings include seventh in urban policy and ninth in social policy

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By Stan Paul

UCLA Luskin has achieved Top 10 recognition among public affairs graduate schools in the nation based on newly released U.S. News & World Report ratings.

The School is in good company, sharing the spot with prestigious programs including Princeton, NYU, Georgetown and the University of Texas, Austin.

“I am very proud of our School’s rapid and continuing rise in the rankings, reaching now the Top 10 Public Affairs Schools in the U.S.,” said Interim Dean Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris. “The recent rankings represent only one indication of the excellence that characterizes the Luskin School and its faculty, staff and students.”

In congratulating the School, Gary Segura, who served as dean from 2017 until the end of 2022, said that it is particularly gratifying that the academic community is taking notice.

“The improvement in our rankings is a reflection of the efforts of faculty and staff across the School and the unique constellation of expertise here at UCLA Luskin,” Segura said.

Mark Peterson, interim chair of UCLA Luskin Public Policy, also pointed out that the achievement is particularly notable for the Luskin School, which is significantly younger — and smaller — than the schools that ranked higher and thus have larger faculties and longer histories from which to develop reputations.

“With our national standing, one might say that we are the proverbial little engine that could,” Peterson said.

Among public institutions, UCLA Luskin was among the top eight nationwide, second among public colleges and universities in California, and third among all public affairs programs in the state. UCLA Luskin Urban Planning is ranked No. 1 in North America by Planetizen, a planning and development network based in Los Angeles that is the only entity that ranks urban planning programs.

The School — with graduate departments in Public Policy, Social Welfare and Urban Planning, and a Public Affairs undergraduate program — also received high marks from U.S. News & World Report for subcategories that include urban policy (No. 7), social policy (No. 9), environmental policy and management (No. 14) and public policy analysis (No. 14).

The latest rankings of public affairs programs, released in May 2023, are based on peer assessment survey results from fall 2022 and early 2023, according to U.S. News & World Report, which surveyed deans, directors and department chairs representing 269 master’s programs in public affairs and administration.

The lists of all the schools, all the individuals surveyed and all the names of the specialty areas evaluated were provided to the news organization by the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration, known as NASPAA, and the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

See the full list of the 2023 U.S. News & World Report Best Graduate Schools.

Segura on Approaches for Reforming City Government

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UCLA Luskin Professor Gary Segura spoke to LAist’s “AirTalk” about the L.A. Governance Reform Project, an effort by Southern California scholars to develop proposals to reform Los Angeles’ scandal-scarred city government. While the project will initially focus on establishing a fair redistricting process, it will also consider the merits of increasing the number of City Council members, which currently stands at 15. “The idea is that there should be a representation system in which all of the city’s various ethnic, racial, sectarian and linguistic groups have an opportunity to see their views represented,” said Segura, the team’s co-chair. “The truth is that’s just easier when there are more seats.” The scholars will invite civil society and social justice organizations to weigh in on this approach. Past efforts to expand the council have met with public opposition, and Segura acknowledged that recent controversies exposing corruption and racist conversations may make electing more City Council members seem unpalatable.

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Segura to Co-Chair Project for Better L.A. Governance

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UCLA Luskin Professor Gary Segura has been named co-chair of a coalition of Los Angeles-based scholars and researchers who will develop proposals for bringing better governance to L.A.’s halls of power. The L.A. Governance Reform Project was launched amid recent controversies at Los Angeles City Hall that have underscored the need for a transparent, accountable and community-driven system of government in the diverse and dynamic region. The group’s first task will be to produce recommendations for an independent redistricting process to be presented to policymakers in the coming months. The team will then turn to other areas, including but not limited to City Council expansion, ethics and land use reform. As they conduct their analysis, the scholars will consult with several members of the governmental, civic, activist and academic communities. “This is an all-hands-on-deck moment in Los Angeles. Interest in reform is high throughout the community, and the best reforms will generate the widest and broadest community support,” said Segura, whose academic work focuses on political representation and social cleavages. Segura serves as co-chair with Professor Ange-Marie Hancock of the University of Southern California, and the project will be administered by the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles. The L.A. Governance Reform Project team also includes scholars from Cal State Northridge, Loyola Marymount University and Pomona College. The project has received funding from philanthropic organizations including the California Community Foundation, The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Weingart Foundation.

 

Message From the Dean

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As you may have heard by the time this issue reaches you, I have stepped down as dean of the Luskin School of Public Affairs, effective at the end of 2022. [Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris has been appointed as interim dean, beginning Jan. 1.]

Serving as dean these last six years has been a profound privilege and, without exception, the best experience of my career. And part of what made that experience so wonderful was getting to meet and learn about the incredibly important and impactful work being done by UCLA Luskin alumni across Los Angeles, the state of California and beyond. The Luskin School has many things of which it can be justly proud, but none so exceptional as its more than 9,000 alumni doing good work for good purposes every day.

The last six years have been transformative.

Together, and with the magnificent foundation provided by Renee and Meyer Luskin’s amazing gift, we have expanded and deepened the impact and scope of the School. In six years, we enlarged the ladder faculty to 59 and have hired more than half our current faculty. Today, that faculty is evenly divided by gender, and a majority of UCLA Luskin ladder faculty are scholars of color.

The founding and growth of the undergraduate major in public affairs has more than doubled the student population, from 525 to more than 1,100.

We have dramatically enlarged our overall levels of extramural research and grant support. UCLA Luskin faculty garnered a record $38.3 million just last year.

The Latino Policy and Politics Institute and the Hub for Health Intervention Policy and Practice were both established and flourished. The UCLA Voting Rights Project waged judicial battle across the country to protect fair and equal voting rights. Social workers traveled to asylee detention camps at the southern border to provide support, counselling and assistance. And Luskin School faculty stepped up in a big way to help mitigate the effects of COVID-19 on Los Angeles’ most vulnerable populations.

Since my appointment, our philanthropic efforts together fundraised $39.03 million on 4,522 gifts, both big and small, ranging from 10 dollars to $3.2 million, all to enhance and deepen the teaching and research efforts of the School and its fine faculty.   

With the great times came the hard ones. We said goodbye to our friends, mourning VC Powe, Zeke Hasenfeld, Martin Wachs, Mark Kleiman and Leo Estrada, as well as earlier retirees such as Karen Lee, Leland Burns and Joel Handler.

We spent four quarters, two summers and a few additional weeks running five university graduate programs and an undergraduate major from our couches and dining tables, hoping to spare faculty, staff and students from the ravages of a global pandemic. The class of 2020 had graduation online. The class of 2021 had a distanced ceremony in the tennis stadium, without their families present.

But through it all, the Luskin School of Public Affairs persevered, stuck firmly to its mission, trained a generation of change-makers, and had an impact. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Events at UCLA have been, frankly, turbulent in the last months, as you have no doubt read. The Luskin School needs leadership that is fresh and energetic to face the challenges and opportunities to come. I look forward to supporting my successor and I hope you will too. I know you will embrace the new dean with the same warmth, help and enthusiasm from which I so richly benefitted. For my part, I look forward to returning to my first love, classroom teaching.

In the coming years, it’s my sincere hope that the Luskin School continues to make change in Los Angeles and beyond. I know that it will. Thank you for being part of that journey and allowing me to join you.

All the best,

Gary

Segura to Step Down as Dean, Remain on Faculty His six years leading the Luskin School has been marked by a deep commitment to equity, diversity and academic excellence

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Gary Segura has decided to end his time as dean of the Luskin School for personal reasons. Here is a message sent to the UCLA Luskin staff and faculty by UCLA Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Darnell Hunt:

Dear Colleagues:

I write to share the news that Dean Gary Segura, who has led the Luskin School of Public Affairs since January of 2017, has informed me of his decision to step down as dean and return to the faculty. His last day will be Dec. 31, 2022. We will share plans for interim leadership of the school as soon as they are in place.

In his nearly six years as dean, Dean Segura has fostered within the Luskin School a deep commitment to academic excellence and to equity, diversity and inclusion. Under his leadership, the school has enrolled an accomplished and highly diverse group of students in its programs and appointed renowned scholars in areas such as poverty and inequality, immigration, criminal justice, education policy and more.

Dean Segura has helped to cement the Luskin School’s status as a leader in research, teaching and practice across the areas of social welfare, urban planning and public policy. Recognizing growing demand for the Luskin School’s programs, in 2018 he led the development of the undergraduate major in public affairs, which provides a multidisciplinary foundation in social science theories, data collection and analysis. Additionally, the school launched a certificate program in data analytics in fall 2021 and added a new dual master’s degree program offered jointly by our Urban Planning Department and the Urban School of Sciences Po in Paris.

Dean Segura also co-founded the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute in 2017 to address inequities and spread awareness of the most critical domestic policy challenges facing Latinos and other communities of color.

Chancellor Block and I are grateful to Dean Segura for advancing the public affairs disciplines at UCLA and for his work to deepen the Luskin School’s impact on communities near and far. Please join me in thanking Dean Segura for his leadership and wishing him well on his next chapter.

Segura on Misguided Assumptions About Latino Voters

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UCLA Luskin Dean Gary Segura spoke to the Los Angeles Times about shifts in Democratic campaign strategies to win the Latino vote. After the reversal of Roe v. Wade, many Democratic candidates are emphasizing abortion rights, discarding the conventional wisdom that the Latino electorate is too socially conservative to be receptive to the platform. “These incorrect assumptions have lasted for a long time, and they have been incorrect for a long time,” said Segura, who has conducted extensive polling research. Political strategists who previously concluded that predominantly Catholic Latino voters would remain staunchly opposed to abortion rights missed nuances among the electorate. While individual voters may have personal convictions against abortion, many draw the line at government intervention that curbs the rights of the people.

Read the article

 

Message From the Dean: Recent Events in the L.A. City Council All of us — not just prominent people and elected officials but especially them — must do more to make the world a safer, saner place.

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Oct. 11, 2022

Friends, Colleagues, Students:

I am once again called upon to communicate to you in a moment where I find myself almost speechless. The wildly offensive racist, anti-Black, anti-indigenous, antisemitic and homophobic conversation among three members of the City Council and a local labor leader deserves all the condemnation it’s receiving and then some. That one party of the conversation was, until two years ago, a member of this academic community is personally painful and deeply disappointing.

We are called upon in moments like this to remember that the cause of human equality and a commitment to decency, equity, and inclusiveness is an ongoing project, one requiring self-examination and vigilance. Let us use this moment to once again repudiate anti-Blackness, repudiate derision directed toward indigenous communities, repudiate antisemitism, repudiate homophobia and demand that all of us — not just prominent people and elected officials but especially them — do better and do more to make the world a safer, saner place in which we all might flourish.

The School is not permitted to take public political positions. However, I wanted you to hear from me that today, in my personal capacity, I signed onto a letter from community and civic leaders across academic, philanthropic and political organizations. The letter calls for the resignation of all three officials, an important first step toward rectifying this injustice and allowing healing to begin.

Our times remain vexed. Emotions remain high. Let’s work to make our better selves the authors of the future.

In solidarity,

Gary M. Segura

Professor and Dean

Making Connections at UCLA Luskin

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The UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs kicked off the 2022-23 academic year with a series of opportunities to connect with students, alumni, faculty and staff. Welcome Week included a graduate student orientation that brought public policy, social welfare and urban planning students together and an undergraduate open house that shared information about the public affairs major during an outdoor luncheon. And on Sept. 22, the 11th annual UCLA Luskin Block Party drew a record crowd, including the School’s benefactors, Meyer and Renee Luskin.

View UCLA Luskin photo galleries from:

Graduate Student Orientation

Undergraduate Open House

11th Annual UCLA Luskin Block Party

Photo booth images from Block Party

Rover images from Block Party

Public affairs majors, pre-majors, prospective majors and minors learn about the program during an open house. Photo by Mary Braswell
Decorative plastic cups emblazoned with "Block Party"
Decorative plastic cups emblazoned with "Block Party"
Crowd of students under trees
Crowd of students under trees

Dean’s Message

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As some of you know, the Luskin School is a bit unusual compared with other institutions. 

The juxtaposition of Social Welfare, Urban Planning and Public Policy sets us apart from most other universities where schools of Social Work and schools of Public Policy are often standalone units, while Urban Planning rests in Design, Architecture or Environmental colleges. Policy and planning can occasionally be found together, but to have the three disciplines together makes the Luskin School something of a unicorn.

This is to our benefit, I believe. When I share our vision with donors, scholars and prospective students, I talk about our unique capacity to examine human well-being from different levels and units of analysis. At UCLA Luskin, we are interested in individuals, families and organizations; municipalities, metros and regions; states, nations and the globe. This is a strength. But to make use of this variety of perspectives, we require places — real and virtual — for faculty with these perspectives to share, cooperate and collaborate. This is the key virtue of our centers and institutes — to serve as a locus of dialogue and collaboration across the entire School.

The Luskin School is blessed to have sizable clusters of faculty interested in housing and homelessness, transportation, the environment, health and mental health, youth and child development, criminal justice and policing, international policymaking and its impacts, race, class and inequality, and so much more. What these various foci have in common is that each has faculty and student researchers in more than one department and, in some instances, all three. In order for the School to have its greatest impact, as a locus for pathbreaking research and to provide the best possible training for our students at every level, breaking down the organizational silos is critical.

In addition, nearly all UCLA Luskin centers/institutes have active participation from faculty outside of the School, within which the research unit provides a mechanism of collaboration and interdisciplinary dialogue. Today, faculty from dozens of departments and programs across nearly every division/school on the campus participate in one or more UCLA Luskin research center.

In this issue of Luskin Forum, we highlight some of the excellent work being done by these centers and institutes, and the ways in which that work advances the mission of the Luskin School. 

And there is much, much more to come.

Forward!

Gary