In Pursuit of Misdemeanor Justice UCLA Luskin researchers selected for nationwide Research Network on Misdemeanor Justice will focus on Los Angeles

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UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs researchers have been selected to join the Research Network on Misdemeanor Justice based at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Michael Stoll, professor of public policy and urban planning, and colleague Michael Lens, assistant professor of urban planning at the Luskin School, will lead research efforts focused on policing patterns related to misdemeanors in the city of Los Angeles. Six sites were selected by the Research Network based on proposals submitted from 39 institutions across the United States.

The Research Network on Misdemeanor Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice on Feb. 16, 2017, announced the six sites — Los Angeles; Toledo, Ohio; Durham, N.C.; Seattle, Wash.; Prince George’s County, Md.; and St. Louis, Mo. — selected to join New York City as part of the network. The core sites will use data analytics to inform policy discussions and reforms regarding trends in the enforcement of lower-level offenses. Through a generous $3.25-million, three-year grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation (LJAF), the Research Network builds upon the success of the Misdemeanor Justice Project in New York City.

“We are excited to work with the core sites and to help inform their policy decisions on critical issues regarding the role of the criminal justice system in responding to low-level misconduct,” said John Jay College President Jeremy Travis.

The Research Network is a national alliance of seven jurisdictions that will examine trends in the enforcement and disposition of lower-level offenses at a local level and, for the first time, at a cross-jurisdictional level. The Research Network, working with research institutions, data partners and stakeholders, aims to build data infrastructure at a local level. The Network also seeks to inform smarter criminal justice policies that enhance public safety, increase public trust in the police and implement fiscally responsible policies, particularly surrounding behaviors that involve officer discretion.

Stoll and Lens will partner with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) to study data from stops and arrests over time and across different precincts. The data will be used to help them identify possible “misdemeanor hot spots” where diversion programs could be more effective.

“The larger good in studying policing related to low-level offenses will be to figure out how the LAPD can police smarter and more effectively,” Stoll said. He added that there is evidence that individuals involved in multiple misdemeanor offenses have a high probability to go on to commit a felony offense, and that intervention and diversion at the misdemeanor level can be effective in reducing felony offenses.

In looking at misdemeanors and police intervention over time, Stoll and Lens hope to build a network in Los Angeles supportive of this effort. This includes partnering with the city attorney, nonprofit organizations and diversion programs.

The selection criteria for the six sites included a commitment toward evidence-based reform in their local jurisdiction and the availability of high quality administrative data on arrests for lower level offenses, summonses, pedestrian stops and case outcome data that includes pretrial detention. The Research Network received 39 proposals. The research partners are UCLA, University of Toledo, North Carolina Central University, Seattle University, University of Maryland and University of Missouri—St. Louis.

“To see the work of the Misdemeanor Justice Project expand from New York City to six other jurisdictions is very exciting,” said professor Preeti Chauhan, the principal investigator of Research Network. “We are looking forward to replicating the New York model to these sites and believe the results will guide smarter criminal justice reform.”

Enforcement of lower-level offenses has a profound impact on the criminal justice system. It can overwhelm the courts and delay case processing, often resulting in large numbers of individuals held on pretrial detention. High-volume activity serves as the basis of public opinion about police and the legitimacy of the criminal justice system. The Research Network works with criminal justice stakeholders to obtain accurate data, provide objective analyses and disseminate findings to key stakeholders in the community, renowned scholars and policymakers to spur a national dialogue.

 

 

L.A.’s Economic Slide: A Who-Done-It Written Over Several Decades UCLA Luskin's Michael Storper and Zev Yaroslavsky unravel the past and future of the city at Town Hall Los Angeles gathering

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By Stan Paul

Los Angeles has long been the setting for detective stories and Hollywood noir, but the real who-done-it is the region’s economy over the past several decades, according to UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs researcher and author Michael Storper.

There are false leads and possibly a smoking gun to be found in solving how Los Angeles — a leader among cities for most of the 20th century — began an economic slide after 1970, falling behind regions such as the Bay Area.

Storper, the distinguished professor of regional and international development in the Luskin School’s Department of Urban Planning, put the city’s economic history under a magnifying glass during a conversation with former Los Angeles city councilman and county supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky on Feb. 8, 2017, at a gathering of Town Hall Los Angeles, a nonprofit leadership forum founded in 1937.

“1970 is an interesting moment; it’s not just an arbitrary date,” said Storper, whose comments reflected research from his recent book, “The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies: Lessons from San Francisco and Los Angeles.” “It’s pretty much the time when what we call the old economies about the middle of the 20th century, based principally on manufacturing, began to shift in what we would now call the new economy.”

Just the Facts

“We started with a simple fact that you can see,” said Storper. “We observed that in 1970 the Bay Area and greater Los Angeles were about equal in what we might call their wealth and development level,” using per capita income as a way to measure wealth, he explained. “Today the Bay Area is still number one, but we’re number 25 out of the regions that have more than 2 million people. That’s a really big slippage that does not put us, frankly, in the best of company.”

The time period in question included the IT revolution, finance revolution, “flipping the switch” for more globalization and the development of advanced services, Storper said. So, the Bay Area is now 30 percent richer than Los Angeles. “What that suggests is that the Bay Area somehow managed the transition more successfully than we did here in Southern California,” he said.

Since 1970, the Bay Area gave birth to Silicon Valley, refocused its economy in finance, landed several IT-related corporate headquarters and is currently winning in biotech. By contrast, greater Los Angeles lost high-wage aerospace and defense firms, as well as several corporate headquarters. “We grow in light manufacturing, but light manufacturing is the low-wage part of the economy,” he added.

And, while L.A. has Hollywood, or as Storper calls it, “the bright star, our super-dynamic, supernova,” it is not enough to float a region of 18 million people. “It has huge positive benefits, but it’s just not big enough,” he said.

“We have to ask ourselves, why is this happening, given that L.A. was the envy of the country and the world for much of the 20th century?” Storper said. “And, if you look at L.A., if you roll back the film to 1970, we had more engineers; we had a vibrant entrepreneurial culture; we had more tech firms; we had equal education levels; and we, in many ways, had better infrastructure than the Bay Area did.”

Storper said he is often asked if there is some kind of “optical illusion” at work, given that the Bay Area’s housing is so much more expensive than in L.A. Are people really better off in Northern California?

“The answer is yes,” Storper said. “When you correct for cost of living of each part of the part of the population at each income level, and the amount of money they spent on housing, they still come out with having somewhere between 20 to 25 percent higher per capita income than we do.”

Another question Storper is asked: Is it because L.A. is so much bigger? No, it’s not a question of geographical scale, Storper said. “Seventy-five percent of the population of the Bay Area lives in counties that are higher in per capita income than our richest county, which is Orange County. They have regionwide prosperity up in Northern California.”

Then Who Done It?

Storper said he and his co-researchers started looking into the different core sectors of the economy: aerospace, information technology, entertainment, finance, logistics, trade and biotech. They found very different stories about how IT and biotech firms, business leaders, leadership groups and public agencies use the resources of their regions to establish a foothold in the new economy.

“There’s a really strong business leadership group in the Bay Area,” Storper said. “We didn’t really know where things were going, but the Bay Area Council got on it early in the 1980s and said, ‘The future is in being the high-tech, high-wage, and high-skill economy. We’re never going to make it in manufacturing again. We’re too expensive and there’s no way to roll that back significantly,’ so they pushed a high-road vision for the Bay Area.”

And the Bay Area Council wasn’t acting alone, relying on business leadership networks. Storper said his researchers looked at the major firms of both regions and asked who sits the boards of directors.

“What emerges is an absolutely striking difference,” Storper said. “In the Bay Area it’s highly networked. They are all networked and talking to each other because they are all on each other’s boards of directors.” Not so for Los Angeles. “You look at L.A. and that’s not the case,” he said. “It’s a bunch of separate communities.”

In addition to industry, scientists and university-based researchers are more networked in the northern part of the state, said Storper, citing a seven times more per capita tendency for a university-based researcher to start a firm or to patent something that becomes commercialized in the Bay Area.

“And it’s not because our universities aren’t as good,” he said. “It’s because theirs are more connected than ours.”

For Storper, the core issue is whether we can “rebuild and change the way we do things and in particular rebuild our human connectivity” in order to be innovative and move forward in the new economy.

An Eyewitness

“I think that Michael’s book is one of the most important pieces of literature I’ve read on Los Angeles in an awful long time,” said Yarosklavsky, former Los Angeles councilman and five-term county supervisor, who spoke following Storper’s economic overview. “What it did was hold up a mirror to us those of us in public life, the private sector, stakeholders in the community. It said, ‘Here’s what’s been happening in the last 40 years.’”

Yaroslavsky, who was born and raised in Los Angeles and who has lived a public life as a civic leader, offered his observations.

“There are a lot of factors in why this happened. I think public investment is a huge piece of this puzzle,” said Yaroslavsky, who currently serves as director of the Los Angeles Initiative based at UCLA Luskin.

Investment in transportation is a prime example, according to Yaroslavsky. “Starting 1970 the BART system was under way,” he said. “By the time we cut the ribbon on the first 4.4 miles of the subway in Los Angeles, it was 1993.”

Going back to the early 1970s, Yaroslavsky said that San Francisco had plateaued while Los Angeles seemed to be on a roll.

“The Korean and Vietnam wars, the Cold War, the space race, and the aircraft and aerospace industries were a backbone of the regional economy, and there was no thought that this would dissipate any time soon,” he said. “As a result, San Francisco’s business leaders looked ahead to position their region for the economy of the future, while Los Angeles’ leaders were looking in the rear-view mirror, searching for ways to preserve aerospace, manufacturing, and other industries that had carried it since the war years.”

Yaroslavsky said that, within a span of 20 years, these portions of L.A.’s economic base had diminished or disappeared, while the Bay Area was on its way. And, he said, L.A. is still playing catch-up.

He also pointed out that much of the political power in the state was based in Northern California, citing the influence of Northern Californians as U.S. senators, state legislators and assembly speakers for half of the 40-year period.

“These were important in that considerable public resources were invested in the north to provide infrastructure for the burgeoning industries of the future,” he said. “The Bay Area had a focused vision of where they wanted to go, and their federal and state representatives partnered with them to help make it happen.”

Southern California did not have a similar cohesive, focused civic leadership with a road map of where they wanted to go, Yaroslavsky said. In fact, during this period most of the remaining Fortune 500 corporations that called L.A. home left.

But Yaroslavsky said that there are signs that Southern California is turning the corner, mentioning several voter-approved measures in the last six years that will provide hundreds of billions of dollars of transportation infrastructure investment in this region.

Political power has also shifted in Southern California’s favor, he said. “The leaders of our legislature are both from L.A. county. The region seems to be working more collaboratively in recent years than in the past.”

Yaroslavsky said L.A.’s economic future is promising, but cautioned that this cannot be taken for granted.

“We are competing with other metropolitan areas along the coast, across the country and around the world,” he said. “Investments in our infrastructure — transit, harbor, airports, and communications are critical to facilitate private sector expansion. Public education and housing costs also heavily influence where private investment is made.”

On the Right Track Transit expert Ethan Elkind’s lecture at UCLA Luskin covers railways in Los Angeles from the 1800s to today

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By Zev Hurwitz

In a city famous for traffic jams and rush-hour gridlock, a return to rail may be putting Los Angeles on the right track.

Rail lines and transit policy were the focus of a UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs lecture delivered by professor Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at the UC Berkeley School of Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) on Jan. 25, 2017. Elkind spoke about the history of rail transit in Los Angeles and what the future for trains in the county might look like.

Elkind began with a discussion about the early years of Los Angeles rail. Prior to the rise of the automobile, Los Angeles developed a complex system of electric streetcars, which became the primary mode of public transportation for the region.

“At its heyday, there were 1,164 miles of electric streetcars, covering four counties,” Elkind said. “By 1911, the average Angeleno rode the system at least one ride per day.”

Zev Yaroslavsky, a UCLA Luskin lecturer and former Los Angeles County supervisor, introduced Ethan Elkind to the audience. Photo by Les Dunseith

Elkind displayed a map of the old Pacific Electric Railway system and its vast number of routes crisscrossing Southern California — a far cry from the relatively modest number of rail lines in Los Angeles today.

“For many Angelenos, they look at this map and it’s hard not to break down in tears at what used to be,” he said. “From Santa Monica to the San Gabriel Mountains you could literally get wherever you needed to go.”

The last streetcar ride took place in 1961, the demise attributed in part to a shift toward policies that favored automobile drivers, such as widening of streets and development of parking. Additionally, the street cars faced their own popularity decline, due in part to poor maintenance, scheduling issues and operator strikes.

Explosive population growth bred traffic congestion, Elkind said, which led one public figure to make addressing transportation a top issue.

“In 1973, City Councilman Tom Bradley ran for mayor of Los Angeles and for the first time made transit a priority,” Elkind said, noting an “overly ambitious” campaign promise by Bradley to break ground on a new rail line within 18 months of his inauguration.

Rail development in the 1970s was an attractive proposition for municipalities because the federal government granted 80 percent of the funds needed to construct a new rail line, contingent on a 20 percent match by local governments.

Ultimately, several tax-raising measures were passed by county voters that paved the way for the first crop of new rail lines in Los Angeles, beginning with a downtown-to-Long Beach route that opened as the Metro Blue Line in 1990 — nearly 20 years after Bradley’s 18-month promise.

Today, 105 miles of railway track reach different corners of Los Angeles County and draw more than 360,000 riders daily. More tracks are on the way, thanks to the 2016 passage of Proposition M, which raised sales taxes to pay for new rail projects, including an extension of the Purple Line subway to Westwood and a Green Line connector to LAX.

“Two cents of every dollar now go into transit,” Elkind said of Measure M’s passage. “It’s a big win. It will generate over $30 billion for transit over the next 40 years.”

Some obstacles remain for transit in Los Angeles, including an ongoing struggle to make projects more cost effective and efficient and keeping pace with continuing population growth for the region.

Elkind drew much of the material for his lecture from the research for his 2014 book, “Railtown: The Fight for the Los Angeles Metro Rail and the Future of the City.”

Zev Yaroslavsky, former Los Angeles county supervisor and director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, introduced Elkind — noting that Elkind had spoken earlier in the day to Yaroslavsky’s undergraduate capstone seminar about the history of transportation in Los Angeles.

“There are a lot of exciting dynamics that are going on in Los Angeles and Southern California in public transportation that are changing the face of the region,” Yaroslavsky said.

The event drew a big crowd that included Luskin and other UCLA students, as well as community members. The lecture was also streamed live online.

First-year MPP student Estefania Zavala attended the lecture because of her interest in transportation policy. “I think it was really interesting to hear about how equity plays a role in the system and what introducing a new Metro station in a really impoverished neighborhood does to gentrifying that neighborhood,” she said. “That’s really interesting to me as a graduate student.”

Transit issues are also personal to her. “It was a little bit frustrating just to hear about inefficiently the system has been laid out,” Zavala said, noting that, as a commuter from Azusa, she wishes that better transit options existed to get her to Westwood.

The Public Policy Department at the Luskin School of Public Affairs co-sponsored the event with the Department of History and the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.

Public Policy Organization’s Volunteer Day Highlights Community Service AMPPS brings together students, staff, and faculty to mark presidential transition in a non-partisan way and ‘do good where it is needed’

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By Stan Paul

Amid angst and uncertainty over the U.S. presidential transition, a group of students, faculty and staff from the UCLA Luskin Department of Public Policy volunteered a Saturday to help needy people throughout Los Angeles.

More than 30 members of the Association of Masters of Public Policy Students (AMPPS) arrived early in the morning on Jan. 21, 2017, at the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank in Vernon for a day of community service, where they sorted, packed, stacked and combined bins of food onto pallets for distribution to partner organizations that serve thousands of people.

Mark Peterson, chair of the UCLA Luskin Department of Public Policy, works with second-year MPP student Ahmed Ali Bob to stack bins of donated food. Photo by Stan Paul

“This is cool. So many volunteers, even on a Saturday. … I like it,” said Siynan Meng, a first-year MPP student. Meng, who is originally from China, said she wanted to experience U.S. volunteer work.

“This is important for us to give back as a cohort and to the community,” said Nikki Lewis, also a first-year student.

She joined with her peers on a fast-moving assembly line adorned with multi-colored stickers indicating the foods to be sorted and packed. Juice, rice, pasta, vegetables and a variety of canned goods were gathered into bags, then placed into bins stacked together to form large cubes.

Joining the effort was the chair of the Public Policy Department, Mark Peterson, who displayed his knack as a natural “wrap artist” by securing large bins of food atop pallet after pallet, circling at a brisk pace to surround the red and blue cubes in swaths of plastic. The pallets were then quickly fork-lifted away.

“Joining with our MPP students and Public Policy Department staff for a Volunteer Day at the L.A. Regional Food Bank warehouse was, to me, truly inspirational,” Peterson said. “Their dedication, spirit and camaraderie were simply infectious.”

Video by Yasaman Boromand

After a few hours of work that went by quickly, the clatter of pallets and frenzy of activity ceased. In total, the morning’s group assembled more than 5,100 units of food for distribution. According to the nonprofit organization’s website, the food bank serves more than 320,000 individuals each month in Los Angeles County.

“A single day packaging food at the food bank will not transform the world, but what these individuals and others like them do each day going forward unquestionably will,” added Peterson. “There is real clarity in contributing to direct and concrete action that will enhance the lives of families and individuals most in need in our own community. “

“This was something everyone can get behind,” said second-year MPP student Ahmed Ali Bob, who served as the group’s student leader for the day. He said the food bank had a strong record of serving the community and helping the homeless and the needy population who live in “food deserts” across the region.

Originally from the Bay Area, Ali Bob said the group wanted to find a non-partisan way to “do good where it is needed, right now.”

“Given the tensions of the recent election, AMPPS wanted to provide an opportunity for people to give back to their community,” said Sydney Ganon, a second-year MPP student and AMPPS member who helped organize the event. “We thought kicking off the winter quarter with an opportunity to do good would be a great way for students and staff to come together, as well as emphasize our personal commitment to improving the world around us.”

Luskin Lecture to Peer Into Future of an Aging America Speaker Jo Ann Jenkins seeks to ‘disrupt aging’ with a fresh outlook on the nation’s increasingly older population – and how society will change as a result

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By Les Dunseith

Thanks to advances in medicine, the number of Americans age 65 or older is expected to double in the next 25 years, and the oldest of the old – those 85 and older – now constitute the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population, according to the National Institute on Aging.

Coping with the societal impact of this demographic reality is a challenge that “we find ourselves woefully unprepared” to deal with, said UCLA Luskin urban planning professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, who is also UCLA’s associate provost for academic planning. “Most seniors live in cities, but the cities are not really designed, planned or developed for them.”

New policies will be needed to successfully adjust to an aging population, and a key player in helping to shape those policies is the next Meyer and Renee Luskin Lecture speaker, AARP’s Jo Ann Jenkins. She is the CEO of an influential national organization that has more than 37 million members over age 50.

During her lecture at Skirball Cultural Center at 6 p.m. on Feb. 7, Jenkins will talk about the transformation of AARP into a leader in social change, dedicated to enhancing quality of life for people as they age.

“She will convey very clearly that older adults are equal citizens who have a right to expect the same rights and benefits and amenities from cities as other groups,” Loukaitou-Sideris said. “This is not yet happening. The onus is on the people who are the city builders, the policymakers, the planners, the politicians.”

Because those are the types of people who work and study at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, hosting a visit by Jenkins was a natural fit. But her presentation about AARP will also be of interest to staff, faculty and students in many other departments on campus.

“UCLA is the premier university when it comes to geriatrics and the biomedical side of gerontology,” said Fernando Torres-Gil, professor of social welfare and public policy. “UCLA, as a university, has tremendous research strength in issues of aging.”

The Luskin Lecture by Jenkins is an example of a growing relationship between the university and AARP that was fostered by Torres-Gil over the past few years while he served on the organization’s board of directors.

AARP is “beginning to understand what we can do for them,” he said about UCLA. “In a nation becoming old and moving to majority-minority status, AARP needs to take a leadership role in responding to multicultural populations and the nexus with aging.”

California, and Los Angeles in particular, present a perfect opportunity for organizations such as AARP to achieve a better understanding of the needs of older Americans from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. One aspect of that effort is a $300,000 grant from AARP to help fund the research of faculty members such as Loukaitou-Sideris, whose studies of the public environment in and around cities have previously noted shortcomings related to the needs of older residents.

For example, because of a lack of public transit options, many elderly people are reluctant to give up driving their cars even when continuing to do so presents a safety concern for themselves and others.

“The truth of the matter is that American cities, and especially West Coast cities that have built so much around the automobile, are not age-friendly cities,” Loukaitou-Sideris said.

Not only are people living longer, but their expectations for quality of life are changing as well. This notion of re-thinking what it means to grow old is one that Jenkins has championed since she became the leader of AARP in 2014, and it is the core message of the bestselling book, “Disrupt Aging,” that will also serve as the topic for her UCLA lecture at Skirball Cultural Center.

In Jenkins’ view, people need to challenge the negative stories often associated with getting older. Her book chronicles Jenkins’ own journey, as well as those of other individuals who are working to change what it means to age in America.

Jenkins has been described as a visionary and thought leader, a catalyst for breakthrough results, accelerating progress and contribution while fostering positive relationships inside and outside her organization, according to Tammy Borrero, UCLA Luskin’s director of events.

The societal evolution that Jenkins and AARP envision cannot be accomplished through words alone, of course. “You want to disrupt aging – this can be your desire – but you really need to have design, planning and policy in place to do that,” Loukaitou-Sideris said. “And that’s where UCLA Luskin comes in.”

Jenkins’ UCLA Luskin Lecture is free and open to all, but an advance RSVP is required for admittance. Details can be found here.

‘A Mission I Can Embrace’ New Dean Gary Segura discusses his first 100 days, and why UCLA Luskin is the ‘right fit’ for him

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By George Foulsham

On Jan. 1, Gary M. Segura began his tenure as Dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

In a Q&A conducted soon after his appointment in October, Segura, professor of public policy and Chicano studies at UCLA and the former Morris M. Doyle Centennial Professor of Public Policy and professor of political science at Stanford University, discussed his new role and how excited he is to lead the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

First of all, congratulations on being named the new Dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Can you tell us your initial reaction when you got the news?

Segura: I was stunned, in fact, and really quite surprised to hear the news. I was in Europe at the time and I’m a little embarrassed to say that I was on a beach when Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Scott Waugh called me. But he was in Europe too, so we were in the same time zone, and it worked out OK. But I was really quite surprised and very, very pleased.

Can you share with us your initial thoughts on what you hope to accomplish when you get started, maybe in your first 100 days at the Luskin School?

Segura: I’m not a physician — I’m not that kind of doctor — but my first rule is to do no harm. There are a lot of very good, wonderful and exciting things going on here. And my first step would be to find out what I need to do and where I can be helpful to enhance, enlarge and grow the existing areas of strength in the school. My second step will be a pure information-gathering one.

I need to know the faculty. I want to know what their interests are, what they think we can do better, what they think is working well. And, also, test out a few ideas in terms of how we might broaden the footprint.

In the coming years, we will see any number of important opportunities and changes come to the Luskin School. I want to be certain to figure out how to make opportunity for growth or renewal a win-win for everyone. I think the first 100 days will be a lot of information gathering and a few trial balloons floated, and we’ll see if they get shot down or if they actually make it to the ceiling.

The Luskin School’s previous full-time dean, Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., believed that Luskin prepared students for the future by providing them with a “change-agent toolkit.” Do you see Luskin continuing that role of helping our students become change agents?

Segura: I would say I see Luskin continuing and extending that role, with the possibility of some additional programs at Luskin. I want to create an environment where we have a huge cadre of students who are going to engage the community as it exists. This is purposeful social science. This is the idea that understanding what’s happening in the world is only useful to the extent that we can then take it and make the world — at the individual level, at the family level, at the community level, at the nation level and maybe even globally — somewhat better than we found it before. So I definitely believe in engaged learning, the idea that the tools they get at UCLA Luskin can be brought to bear on their life goals and their own communities and families.

You are steeped in Latina/o, gender, political and all minority issues. How has your academic background informed and prepared you for your new role as Dean here?

Segura: This society is changing in ways that are unprecedented. In 1950, this society was 90 percent white. When Ronald Reagan was president of the United States in 1980, this society was 80 percent white. In the last national census, it was 63.7 percent white, non-Hispanic. And, in the next census, that number is likely to be around 60 percent. At the same time, we’ve had a revolution in gender relations in the United States over the last 50 or 60 years. So heterosexual white males, who have so dominated American society in all of its facets — whether it be governance, business, industry — those individuals comprise only about 30 percent of the national population. We have relatively little understanding of the other 70 percent. The traditional social sciences and even some of the public affairs and public policy folks in the world have devoted less attention because they were not the holders of power.

What we’re seeing now is a gigantic change in the composition of the United States at every level. And I think preparing our students — many of whom come from that 70 percent — to engage in an America that fundamentally looks different than the one you and I grew up in is an important change. My particular research interests speak to that, but I’m certainly not alone in that interest and expertise. There are others in the school and others on campus and that’s a primary concern.

Finally, any special message you’d like to share with our students, faculty, staff, alumni and donors?

Segura: I’m very excited to be here. When you look for opportunities to take a leadership role, many of them look like just administrative roles, basically file cabinet management.

I didn’t want that. I wanted an administrative role where I believed in the mission of what I was doing. Here, we have three wonderful departments, an array of research institutes, all of which are dedicated to the improvement of the quality of life, of people living in the United States and beyond, especially in the Los Angeles basin. That’s a mission I can embrace and get behind and something I can actually bring something to personally. This was the right fit for me. I hope I can do my best to help everyone achieve the goals that they have for their time here at Luskin.

A Crash Course in Politics For MPP alumni, 2016 was a time to run, to rally and, sometimes, to rant

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By Stan Paul

At least one ran for office. Another handled a presidential candidate’s digital correspondence. A third harnessed emerging media to further her political activism. It was an election year, after all — a time when Department of Public Policy graduates are even more likely than usual to get engaged in the democratic process.

Recent UCLA Luskin alumnus Nelson Esparza MPP ’15 sought public office by running for and winning a seat on his county school board back home in Fresno.

Esparza, who teaches economics at a community college, sees the role as a perfect fit. “The Board of Education is especially personal because I am the students of my district,” said Esparza, who grew up in California’s Central Valley. “I faced the same barriers and obstacles that students in my district are battling every day.”

His political journey began at age 16, he recalls, when a teacher sparked his interest in economics and put him on a path that eventually led to Luskin and on to politics.

“I had a broad desire to understand how the world worked, where the money flowed, why things happened the way they did,” Esparza said. “And economics sounded like it might teach me just that.”

After obtaining what he calls “a sweet fellowship in Sacramento” as an undergrad, Esparza experienced a “crash course” in California politics and public policy.

“And that was it – I was sold,” he said. “My passion was impacting public policy in my home state and home community.”

That led him to the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. “My collective experience at Luskin was invaluable,” he said. “It was a place where I could capitalize on my experience and interest in impacting public policy at the state and local level.”

Now he’s ready to show the value of that Luskin degree. “I want to have the ability to point and say, ‘We produce change agents in a wide range of capacities, including elected.’”

Vernessa Shih MPP ’14 spent the 2016 campaign working at Hillary for America in Brooklyn, N.Y., where she served as digital correspondence manager for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Another recent MPP graduate, Vernessa Shih MPP ’14, got a chance to relive one of her favorite student memories — a presidential debate — from an insider’s perspective. Shih spent the 2016 campaign working at Hillary for America in Brooklyn, N.Y., where she served as digital correspondence manager. On any given day, she would respond to people with policy questions, pull content to circulate to the campaign’s digital team or pitch a great story to the speechwriting team for possible inclusion in Hillary Clinton’s remarks.

“It’s still a bit surreal when I think about being on this campaign now,” Shih said as Election Day drew near. “It’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever done, and it’s also the most tired I’ve ever been.”

Shih credits her time at the Luskin School with opportunities to seek and grow in leadership.

“Through working with the Public Policy Department and the Dean’s Office, I felt a great deal of agency to convene opportunities for my class,”

Shih said. “Those were some of my first experiences in project management. I learned a lot from the successes and failures of trying to convene people and resources.”

Shih also said she has been challenged to grow in her understanding of other people’s experiences and the big and small details that affect others’ lives.

“This has been a really challenging year for this country. The one thing that seems to cut through all the static is remembering that everything I am doing is in the hopes of continuing forward progress,” Shih said. She hopes the next generation will “have a more diverse, more open and, hopefully, more equitable future than even I had.”

Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed MPP ’07, who co-hosts a podcast titled “GoodMuslimBadMuslim,” describes herself as activist, storyteller and politico.

Looking forward is also important to Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed MPP ’07, who describes herself in three words: activist, storyteller, politico.

But, these labels only scratch the surface of her many creative and empowering efforts. She co-hosts a podcast called “GoodMuslimBadMuslim,” an ongoing discussion on “walking this fine line between what it means to be good and bad” as a Muslim American woman. And she works with the organization 18MillionRising to empower Asian Americans — nearly 6 percent of the U.S. population – to vote.

“We are currently going full force on turning out the vote,” said the Los Angeles-based Ahmed.

Ahmed said she’s helped mobilize thousands of Asian American and Pacific Islanders — representing at least 17 different languages — to go to the polls in the past 15 years.

“I always knew I wanted to leave the world a better place than when I came into it,” said Ahmed, who was honored in September with a Rising Star award by the Organization of Chinese Americans of Greater Los Angeles (OCA-GLA). The mixed-media artist, essayist and poet explained that vision is what motivated her to work in Washington, D.C. as an environmental organizer starting in 2001. In 2016 Ahmed was honored as a White House Champion of Change for Asian American and Pacific Islander Art and Storytelling.

Ahmed said she decided to pursue public policy specifically to work on racial justice, which at the time was an underexplored field. Inside and outside of formal classes, she spent time trying to merge what she was learning elsewhere to what she was learning in public policy classes.

“To this day, I take those learnings on racial justice and incorporate it into what I do now.”

A Civics Lesson on L.A., From the Inside Three UCLA Luskin School students gain real-world experience working as David Bohnett Fellows at City Hall in Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office while pursuing their graduate degrees

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By Zev Hurwitz

It would be easy to mistake Tammy Barreras, Jayanthi Daniel and JC De Vera for any of the hundreds of staffers who hustle through the hallways of L.A.’s historic City Hall each day. The three carry official city badges, they each work in the mayor’s office and their days are packed with memos, deadlines, proposals, city events and projects — all geared at improving the lives of Angelenos.

But when this trio clocks out, they each take on a role that’s unmatched by other city employees: full-time graduate student.

Together, the three make up the 2016-2017 cohort of the David Bohnett Fellowship Program at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. It’s a unique opportunity for graduate students to work closely with Mayor Eric Garcetti’s staff while completing their master’s degrees at UCLA.

The fellowship program, which accepts applications from UCLA Luskin students in all three of the school’s disciplines, consists of one summer of full-time work in the mayor’s office, followed by a yearlong, part-time position at City Hall during the fellows’ second year of coursework at Luskin.

UCLA has offered the fellowship for students in the School of Public Affairs since its inception in 2007. Luskin students may apply in the spring of their first year for placement during the summer between the two years of the program.

From left, UCLA Luskin students Jayanthi Daniel, JC De Vera and Tammy Barreras are working at L.A. City Hall this year as part of the David Bohnett Fellowship Program. Photo by George Foulsham

The Three Fellows

Each fellow works in a different department within the mayor’s office. Tammy Barreras, a student in the Master of Social Welfare (MSW) program at Luskin, works in Garcetti’s Budget and Innovation Department and focuses her work in the Innovation and Performance Management Unit.

“We work with city departments and we empower city employees to deliver better services, whether it’s through strategy or using problem-solving tools,” she said. “We do general manager reviews to keep city heads accountable and measure the successes of the departments.”

Barreras grew up in the San Gabriel Valley community of La Puente. She previously worked as an inpatient pharmacy technician in Orange County before pursuing her undergraduate work at Cal State Los Angeles. She had plans to become a pharmacist before shifting her focus to social work after realizing her true passion was helping those in need.

“I feel like my life prepared me for this experience in City Hall,” she said. “I came here with the purpose to impact the millions of people in this community and for me this is an opportunity to understand how to do it.”

JC De Vera, pursuing his Master of Public Policy (MPP), works in the mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs. Much of his work involves legislative advocacy and community outreach programs. One of De Vera’s first projects during the fellowship was helping organize a press conference in which the mayor announced the launch of a voter registration campaign geared for Spanish-speaking Angelenos.

“Working in government, every day is very dynamic,” De Vera said. “In the public policy curriculum, we’re learning about political institutions and policies — how do you actually get things done, how do you get policies passed? Being in the mayor’s office has illuminated all of that and really brought it to life.”

Jayanthi Daniel, also an MSW candidate, conducts her fellowship work in the office of Ana Guerrero, the mayor’s Chief of Staff. It’s a rare appointment — only one other fellow in the program’s history has had a chance to work in such an important office. Her work largely involves research, hands-on team assistance and event execution. Due to the broad nature of the work for the mayor’s chief aide, Daniel finds herself working on a variety of projects and programs.

“I provide support wherever needed,” she said. “It’s hard to put down exactly what I do because in the nature of politics, my job changes every day that I’m in here. What it all boils down to is that we’re trying to achieve the mayor’s agenda for Los Angeles.”

Daniel, a former journalist, works closely with Guerrero, the city’s first Latina chief of staff and one of the highest-ranking Latina city officials.

“Not only is it an honor to work with a chief of staff, I’m working with a groundbreaking, trailblazing chief of staff — somebody I learn from every single day,” Daniel said.

The fellowship satisfies the internship requirement for the Public Policy curriculum and the fieldwork requirement for Social Welfare master’s students. Because the fellows are also full-time students, there is often overlap between what is discussed in the classroom and at City Hall.

“We can bring a lot of the work we’re doing here into the classroom setting, because we have a unique opportunity to have this experience,” Barreras said. “Whenever topics about civic engagement come up in class, we can talk about the city application from our perspective working in the fellowship.”

The David Bohnett Foundation has been funding the program for UCLA students for the past 10 years, and now supports similar programs for graduate students at the University of Michigan and New York University.

UCLA Luskin graduate student Tammy Barreras meets with her supervisor, Dan Caroselli, a UCLA Luskin Urban Planning alumnus and a former Bohnett Fellow, who is director of the innovation and performance management unit at L.A. City Hall. Photo by George Foulsham

Developing ‘The Next Group of Leaders’

This fellowship was born out of a conversation at a dinner party hosted by David Bohnett, the foundation’s chair. Bohnett found himself in conversation with former Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Torie Osborn, former Luskin School Dean Barbara Nelson and Luskin lecturer Michael Dukakis. The four had been discussing opportunities for students to work in local government when the idea to place Luskin students in City Hall first arose.

“The school really came together and said, ‘How can we select some of those leaders among our students who would want to work in local government?’ ” said VC Powe, who administers the program in her role as the Luskin School’s director of career services and leadership development. “We really created this program as an opportunity to give students a place where they could work in local government.”

Powe explained that the Bohnett Fellowship is also a means to advance one of the Luskin School’s major goals for its students.

“Having these kinds of opportunities is important for UCLA Luskin because our mission is to develop the next group of leaders and change agents,” Powe said. “When we have these kinds of fellowships — when students can learn from the deputy mayor or the head of a non-profit — they get the skills to become the next leaders. That’s really important for the school to provide.”

‘A Lineage’ of Bohnett Fellows at City Hall

They work in different offices within City Hall, but the three current fellows say they do run into each other frequently and have attended each other’s programs and events. Additionally, nearly a dozen Bohnett fellowship and UCLA Luskin alumni now work full time in city government.

“There’s a sizable lineage of Bohnett Fellows that still work here,” De Vera said. “They help mentor us and help us figure out how to navigate this place, how to make the most of our experiences and they’ve been a really great resource to draw on.”

Alumna Kiana Taheri MPP ’16 was a Bohnett fellow in the immediate past cohort and now works full time in the Innovation and Performance Management Unit (iMPU) — the same department where she worked as a fellow — doing similar work to Barrera’s current post. She found that her coursework for the MPP degree and her fellowship work had tremendous overlap.

At UCLA, Taheri said, she had been interested in improving government efficiency and utilization of innovative solutions. The Bohnett fellowship provided a chance to do that.

UCLA Luskin grad student JC De Vera works in the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs. Photo by George Foulsham

“I was excited for the opportunity to be a part of an administration that was working toward a greater more equitable society,” she said. “The fellowship allowed for the mayor’s office to see my true caliber as a UCLA graduate student, develop assurance in my capabilities and ultimately choosing to invest in me.”

Dan Caroselli, director of the iMPU, supervises both Barreras and Taheri. Caroselli, who is an alumnus of UCLA Luskin’s Urban Planning program and another former Bohnett Fellow, said the program has been very successful in bringing “motivated and capable” students into city government.

“It’s been incredibly practical as a pipeline of talent,” said Caroselli, who graduated with a master’s in urban planning in 2011. “I’ve had the opportunity to supervise five different Bohnett Fellows and work closely with many more during their time in the mayor’s office. I owe my career to the Bohnett Fellowship and so it means a great deal to me to be able to continue to be involved in the program and to advise these current fellows as they navigate a potential career with the City.”

The Fellows Go to Washington

For the past five years, Bohnett Fellows from the three campuses have attended the United States Conference of Mayors in Washington, D.C. The conference brings together civic leaders from over 1,400 U.S. cities to build partnerships, work on policies and discuss successes and best practices.

This year’s Winter Meeting of the Conference will be held Jan. 17-19.

Barreras said she hadn’t yet seen the agendas for this year’s Winter Meeting of the Conference, but is looking forward to learning from leaders in diverse cities and seeing the City of Los Angeles as a leader among its peers.

“We’re going to see what a lot of other cities are doing at the city government level,” she said. “While there will be many small cities and big cities, L.A. is one of the biggest cities that will be looked to for innovative and progressive ideas.”

An Academic Space for Activists Funmilola Fagbamila and Lisa Hasegawa have been awarded inaugural 2017 UCLA Activist-in-Residence Fellowships

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With a shared commitment to advance democracy through research and alliances with civil rights organizations and progressive social movements, the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin and the UCLA Asian American Studies Center have partnered to pilot a UCLA Activist-in-Residence Program. Funmilola Fagbamila and Lisa Hasegawa are the inaugural 2017 Activist Fellows. They will be in residence on the UCLA campus during winter quarter, from Jan. 4 to March 31.

“Our organizations recognize that the work of social change is demanding,” both organizations said in a statement. “It is our objective to help sustain the activists involved in this work. The collaboration will help strengthen the infrastructure of social transformation by providing activists with the time and space to recharge and to reflect upon a complex challenge facing their communities, while also allowing UCLA undergraduate students to develop or strengthen their own commitment to social justice.”

Fagbamila, an activist and community organizer with more than eight years of experience in Los Angeles County, is the 2017 Irvine Fellow on Urban Life. Hasegawa, who is a UCLA Luskin Senior Fellow, has worked at the intersections of civil and human rights, housing, health and community organizing for her entire career.

Funmilola Fagbamila

Fagbamila has been an organizer with Black Lives Matter since its inception, centering its work on policing, mass incarceration and the overall physical health and wellness in poor black and brown communities. As the arts and culture director for Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, Fagbamila’s work sits at the intersection of blackness and freedom.

While she was a graduate student in UCLA’s African American Studies Department, Fagbamila also worked with a number of campus and community groups, primarily organizing around student rights, promoting faculty and student solidarity, and hosting educational events on the increased privatization of public education in California.

The Irvine Fellow on Urban Life is a residence program funded by the James Irvine Foundation established to bring scholar-activists to the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin who will undertake social movement research and pedagogy directly concerned with equity at the urban scale.

Ananya Roy, director of the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin, considers the Activist-in-Residence Program “an important anchor for the work of the institute.”

“It brings to the campus leading public intellectuals and foregrounds the significance of learning directly from social movements and community organizations,” Roy said. “We are especially thrilled that our inaugural activist-in-residence is Funmilola Fagbamila whose work with Black Lives Matter L.A. connects performance art, scholarship, and activism to create new public spheres and new modes of dissent. We know that in particular our students will benefit tremendously from her presence and will be inspired to recast their own engagements in dialogue with her.”

Fagbamila explained that her “scholarship explores the complexity of black identity and ideological posturing in the context of Western world.” During her residency Fagbamila plans not only to produce a curriculum and host campus workshops regarding inter-ideological communication and intracommunal difference but also complete her stage play, “The Intersection,” based on engagement across ideological communities. Moe information about Funmilola Fagbamila’s work can be found on YouTube.

Lisa Hasegawa

Hasegawa, the Asian American Studies Center (AASC) Activist Fellow, served as the executive director of the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Development (CAPACD) for the past 15 years, stepping down in December. Prior to National CAPACD, she was the community liaison of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans Pacific Islanders in the Clinton administration.

Hasegawa said she is committed to leveraging her cross-disciplinary networks across the country for UCLA students, faculty and larger community. Returning to the AASC as the Activist in Residence is a homecoming for her. While she was an undergraduate at UCLA, she started her career in community activism through an AASC internship at the Asian Pacific Health Care Venture.

The AASC Activist Fellow is made possible through the Yuji Ichioka and Emma Gee Endowment in Social Justice and Immigration Studies. The endowment was established in honor of the late UCLA scholar Yuji Ichioka and his wife, activist-scholar Emma Gee, and supports engaging leading activist scholars who are pursing research that provides new analysis of the significant historic and contemporary role of race, ethnicity, class and gender in American life.

“Lisa has an extraordinary knack for bridging the worlds of policymaking, community practice and academic research,” said AASC Interim Director Marjorie Kagawa Singer. “The Center is truly excited to work with Lisa in addressing social inequality in Asian American and Pacific Islander communities through a variety of events, such as presentations, class visits, workshops, panels, activist projects, and much more.”

“We are on the brink of a very challenging period for Asian Americans Pacific Islanders, undocumented immigrants, communities of color, low-income and queer communities,” Hasegawa said. “This fellowship will give me the opportunity to reflect on my 20 years in D.C., as well as a chance to think critically, with fresh perspective, about what we need to do in the next 20 years to create systemic equity. I look forward to facilitating lively dialogue and concerted action amongst networks of activists, advocates and practitioners, together with students and faculty.”

As part of her fellowship, Hasegawa will document achievements and challenges faced during the Obama administration. Additionally, she plans to engage students, faculty and community activists in dialogue about how strategies may have fallen short, and take stock of policies that can be strengthened, preserved or defended.

A welcome reception for the two activist fellows will be held on Jan. 12 at the Luskin Commons. Please RSVP here.

For nearly 50 years, the UCLA Asian American Studies Center has enriched and informed not only the UCLA community, but also an array of broader audiences and sectors in the state, the nation, and internationally about the long neglected history, rich cultural heritage, and present position of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in our society.

The Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin advances radical democracy in an unequal world through research, critical thought, and alliances with social movements and racial justice activism. The work of the institute analyzes and transforms the divides and dispossessions of our times, in the university and in our cities, across global South and global North. Launched in February 2016, the institute support research developed in partnership with social movements and community-based organizing.

For more information on the Activist-in-Residence program, please contact UCLA Asian American Studies Center at melanyd@ucla.edu or the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at guihama@luskin.ucla.edu.

UCLA Luskin Diversity Recruitment Fair Has a Message: You Belong Here First schoolwide fair provides encouragement and information to prospective students — and explains why diversity matters

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By Stan Paul

Elizabeth Salcedo, a recent graduate of the Master of Social Welfare (MSW) program at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, has a simple, emphatic message for those contemplating a career in social work, urban planning or public policy — “Just Apply!”

“I did, and I got in,” beamed the 2013 alumna at the Luskin School’s first all-school Diversity Recruitment Fair held Dec. 3 UCLA’s Ackerman Grand Ballroom. Like many students contemplating life after their undergraduate studies, Salcedo said she was reluctant and had self-doubt. Now working as an analyst in community development for the City of Long Beach, Salcedo can confidently articulate a good reason to apply and why diversity is important: “We need your voice.”

Salcedo participated in a panel of UCLA Luskin alumni — representing the School’s three departments, Public Policy, Social Welfare and Urban Planning — who shared their firsthand experiences of life during and after Luskin. The daylong event also included a panel of the School’s three department chairs and informational breakout sessions for their respective departments. Resources and advice concerning admissions and financial aid were also offered to prospective students, as well as a “suite of tools” they might need for their careers.

Urban Planning breakout sessions included topics such as “Our ’Hoods, Our Stories” to “Planning Post Trump.” A panel of current Master of Public Policy (MPP) students talked about building a “career toolkit” and what future students would need to do to prepare themselves – or, as first-year MPP student Isaac Bryan described it, “to be in that room” – where policy-making, discussion and analysis are taking place — from the local to the federal level.

“You are creating a baseline to create change,” said Joanna Williams MSW ’14, a social worker in Orange County who also participated in the alumni panel. She added that while challenging, graduate study at UCLA Luskin also offered an opportunity to explore options to collaborate and to form important and lasting bonds with classmates.

From left, Luskin alumni Elizabeth Salcedo MSW ’13, Joanna Williams MSW ’14, Richard France MA UP ’10 and Veronica Padilla-Campos MA UP ’06 speak during a panel discussion at the UCLA Luskin Diversity Recruitment Fair. Photo by Stan Paul

Panelist Jen Tolentino, a 2010 graduate of the MPP program said that for her, “the Public Policy degree has framed how I think about my work and framed how I think about problems,” which includes looking at issues through the lens of social justice.

Urban planning alumnus Richard France MA UP ’10, advised potential applicants that while finding a specific purpose for graduate study, “know that is it wide open,” referring to the field and careers that will follow graduation. He also reinforced the connection with peers at UCLA Luskin. “You will see your classmates out there. Your cohort is going to be one of your greatest resources and they are going to bring a diversity of experiences,” said France, who now works for a prominent strategic consulting firm headed by UCLA Luskin Urban Planning alumnae.

Former Los Angeles City Councilman (2001-2013) and Urban Planning alumnus Ed Reyes served as the keynote speaker for the fair, organized in cooperation by each of the School’s departments and staff, as well as diversity groups from each of the School’s three disciplines.

“In you, I see hope. In you, I see optimism,” Luskin Senior Fellow Reyes said to the potential applicants while balancing encouragement with a bit of practical advice. “I’m not going to candy-coat it, it’s going to be tough. It’s not going to be a straight line. But, it’s going to be worth it.”

Attendees energized and motivated by the event included applicant Kathleen Ann Sagun, who works in administration for the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. She said that she was appreciative of all of the valuable information provided during the day, but, more than that, “It was empowering” to hear the stories of the alumni and to learn about “the advantages they had from doing there graduate studies here, at UCLA.”

“By the end of the day, we hope you will be motivated to join Luskin,” said Gerry Laviña, director of field education and associate director of the D3 (Diversity, Differences and Disparities) Initiative at UCLA Luskin, who was part of the network of Luskin organizers who made the day possible.

“You belong here because we believe in diversity as a necessary component of what makes each department, each profession, Luskin and UCLA excellent,” said Laviña, a 1988 graduate of the School’s MSW program. “You see that excellence in our students and in the student organizations that we have. You see that in the excellence in the research of our faculty and our research centers. You see that excellence in the communities and causes we believe in.”

In wrapping up the event, he said one thing became clear: “We must continue to value and validate diversity in order to maintain our excellence. The communities we serve deserve this.”

Others who helped organize the event included Jennifer Choy, associate director of admissions and recruitment for the Luskin Department of Urban Planning; the Public Policy student group Policy Professionals for Diversity and Equity (PPDE); Social Welfare’s Diversity Caucus; and Urban Planning’s Planners of Color for Social Equity. Choy and her colleagues, Public Policy’s Sean Campbell and Social Welfare’s Tiffany Bonner, also held Q&A sessions for interested applicants.

“We hope events like this encourage prospective students from underrepresented groups to feel a sense of belonging at UCLA Luskin and inspire them to join our commitment to social justice in serving disadvantaged communities,” Choy said.