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

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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/

Cooperation May be the Key to Survival for Airbnb in the Sharing Economy UCLA professors project the future of Airbnb based off lessons from past startups.

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The short-term home rental company Airbnb seemed to have come out the clear blue sky, but this “disruptor” in the rental business may disappear just as fast into thin air unless it is perceived as a cooperator and “partner,” according to an opinion piece by Paavo Monkkonen, assistant professor of Urban Planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and research fellow at the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate.

Using as an example one of the original peer-to-peer disrupters of the music industry — Napster — Monkkonen and co-author and UCLA Urban Planning alum Nathan S. Holmes explain that Napster failed where iTunes, led by Apple’s Steve Jobs, found success because of a cooperative business model that worked with the music industry.

Monkkonen and Holmes, point out that the multibillion dollar (and growing) company based in San Francisco already is threatened by resistance and hostility from local governments, which the authors say has the potential to turn Airbnb into “the Napster of the short-term rental market.”

MPP Student Selected as Semi-Finalist for Presidential Fellowship

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Public Policy student Ryan Rosso has been selected as a Semi-Finalist for the Presidential Management Fellowship (PMF) program.

The Presidential Management Fellowship is a leadership and career development program administered by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Fellows are given a two-year appointment at a Federal agency, in addition to participating in career development and networking activities organized by the program. Throughout their appointment, fellows work through a series of developmental assignments and receive feedback for their work.

Rosso, one of 5 UCLA Semi-Finalists and the only Luskin representative, was selected from a pool of approximately 6,000 applicants. A first year in the MPP program, Rosso is concentrating in public finance, education and tax and hopes to work as a budget analyst in the future.

 

Urban Planning Alum Patrick Horton Receives Honor Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti congratulated Horton for his service to the public

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Patrick Horton MA Urban Planning ’01 was recently honored for dual civilian and U.S. Coast Guard service at the Chamber of Commerce in his hometown of Temple City. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti congratulated Horton for his service to the public both within the Coast Guard and as a Los Angeles City employee. As a member of the Coast Guard, Lt. Horton serves in maritime law enforcement, search and rescue, and marine wildlife protection as an Executive Officer based in Long Beach. Horton has served three terms as a Temple City Planning Commissioner.

Meet the 2015-2016 class of Luskin Senior Fellows Students and faculty met with Senior Fellows, members of the community that serve as mentors and advisors to UCLA Luskin.

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By Adeney Zo
UCLA Luskin Student Writer

Each year a distinguished group of leaders from the public, private, and non-profit sectors is invited to become part of the Luskin School of Public Affairs community.  The Senior Fellows represent a bridge connecting Luskin’s problem-solving academic departments of Public Policy, Social Welfare, and Urban Planning to the real world challenges being faced by community, policy and political leaders at local, regional, and national levels.

“VC actually matched me with my mentor, Stan Hoffman,” said first-year Urban Planning student Riddhi Chakraborty, who looks to enter the field of real estate analysis policy. “His job is so related to what I wanted to do [in the future] that it was perfect.”

In addition, Senior Fellows have been asked to enhance their participation as leadership role models, providing students with a career meeting, a networking experience that includes arranging informational interviews with colleagues, and an invitation to spend a half-day at the business location of each Fellow.

First year Public Policy/ School of Medicine student Adia Scrubb was a former student of her mentor, Dr. David Carlisle. Encouraged by Dr. Carlisle to apply, she hopes to gain more knowledge of the healthcare policy field through the program. “I wanted to gain insider information on the work of a physician in the public policy setting,” said Scrubb.

This year’s annual Senior Fellows breakfast was held on October 29, 2015. The guest speaker was Michele Prichard, Director of Common Agenda for the Liberty Hill Foundation and a graduate of UCLA’s Urban Planning program. In her keynote, Prichard addressed the current issues new policymakers would face once they graduate, but encouraged the Senior Fellows with her three main points: There is no better time than now, no better place than Los Angeles and no better program than Luskin Senior Fellows to prepare students for a future in public affairs.

For photos of the event click here.

Senior Fellows Leadership Program

2015-2016

Randy Barth — Founder and CEO of THINK Together and the Executive Chairman of the Principal’s Exchange.

Kafi Blumenfield — Founding executive director of the Discovery Cube Los Angeles science museum and former Executive Director of Liberty Hill Foundation.

Danielle Brazell — General Manager of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

Carol Chodroff — Opportunity Youth Director for the Alliance for Children’s Rights.

Rima Cohen — Managing Director for Aspen Health Innovators Fellowship.

Melissa Martinez — U.S. Diplomat in Residence at UCLA (serving Southern California).

Steve Nissen — Senior Vice President of Legal & Government Affairs at NBC Universal.

 

POV: The Problem with Los Angeles’ economy The topics of professor Michael Storper's new book on urban economies discussed on KCRW.

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Why do some public organizations deny it? Don’t shoot the messenger, please. 

I was recently on the radio show “Which Way LA?,” with a panel discussion devoted to our book on San Francisco and Los Angeles.

http://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/which-way-la/is-la-or-san-francisco-leading-the-way-to-the-future

One of the panelists was Mr. Hasan Ikhrata, who is the Executive Director of the Southern California Association of Governments.  This is what is known as a “council of governments” under California state law, and a “metropolitan planning organization” under federal law.  Basically, it’s a place where the governments of a region come together to analyze the region’s past and future and consider ways forward, to improve the lives of people in the region.  That’s the goal they state on their website.   Organizations such as SCAG are important, because they produce ideas for the many scattered governments in the region and try to get everybody on the same page to understand and solve problems.

Mr. Ikhrata’s position in our radio debate was surprising, as it was in the interview our team conducted with him during the research for our book.  I would characterize it as “deny everything.”   What I mean by this is that he did not even admit that Southern California has a problem.  But if slipping from 4th place to 25th place among metropolitan regions in the USA is not a problem, then I’d like to know why.

Listening to the interview, Mr. Ikhrata did the following:  first, even though he knows perfectly well (and I stated it clearly before he spoke) that our book compares the whole five-county Southern California region to the whole 10-county Bay Area, he tried to change the subject, speaking about the city of San Francisco and emphasizing its smallness.  This is an elementary error that nobody in his position could possibly commit without it being a deliberate attempt to divert attention.

He attempted to make four other points, which range from vague to clearly inaccurate. First, he noted that So Cal has received a lot of immigrants, as if this is the reason for its economic decline.  But he knows that both So Cal and the Bay Area had the same proportion of immigrants in 1970 (11% each) and the same now (respectively 38% and 39%).  It’s true that the origins of the immigrants are somewhat different, but it’s simply not true to characterize LA as more an immigrant gateway than the Bay Area.

We also clearly show in our book that LA’s slippage is not primarily because it received more of its immigrants from poorer origins than the Bay Area. Instead, it’s that the quality of opportunities (and wages) offered to immigrants in the Bay Area have gotten progressively better over time than in LA, whether for educated or less-educated immigrants and from any origin group.  So don’t blame immigrants, Mr. Ikhrata, blame the failure of LA’s economy to capture the industries that give people high-quality opportunities.

His second claim was that LA’s economy is “diverse.”  As someone working in economic matters, he knows that this term means nothing when applied to a regional economy.  It could be applied to the people of a region, in which case the two populations are indeed “diverse,” by which we mean composed of people from many different cultures and birthplaces.   It could mean what economists call, more accurately, “diversified,” meaning having many different industries and not specializing in much of anything.  This is exactly what we document for LA, and show that it’s a main reason for LA’s slippage down the ranks of regions.  All the world’s wealthy great city-regions are strongly specialized, such as New York in finance or SF in high technology.  LA used to be strongly specialized and is no longer, and this is one main reason why it has become relatively poorer.  So Mr. Ikhrata’s assertion that LA’s economic diversity is a positive thing is exactly wrong.

This is linked to a third assertion he made, which is that because the Bay Area is so specialized in such high-wage activities as information technology or biotech (how terrible is that?) that it will one day collapse, as a one-horse town vulnerable to shocks.  But we show in our book that Silicon Valley is now in its 7th incarnation and that the Bay Area continues to develop wave after wave of new technology and entrepreneurship, the way LA used to do in the middle of the 20th century.   In any case, where is Mr. Ikhrata’s evidence?  There is a long scholarly paper trail on specialized cities that shows that they are not, on average, more vulnerable to decline than highly diversified ones.  It’s the wrong question in fact.  The issue is whether a city-region stays dynamic, innovative and entrepreneurial in whatever it’s activity happens to be, whether it’s highly concentrated in a few sectors or spread over many.  He cited absolutely no evidence for his assertion about impending Bay Area doom, because there isn’t any evidence to cite.

Finally, he repeated that Southern California creates more “high tech” jobs than the Bay Area! I especially liked this brazen, unsupported claim.  But it’s not true.  Not only does the Bay Area create jobs that are “higher high tech” than LA (higher up the technology skills chain and paid much, much more than in LA), but it creates more of them in an absolute sense, even though its economy is only half the size of LA’s.

One doesn’t expect perfect accuracy in every public debate.  Economic development is a complicated matter.  But in our book we chased down every clue we could find and all of our conclusions are amply documented with the best available evidence.  Mr. Ikhrata is in a position of public responsibility.  Why would he deny that the Southern California region has a serious problem and not then turn his organization into a forum for trying to help the region get out of this predicament?  Isn’t that what his organization says it is there to do, with the taxpayers’ money?

One reason he might be denying that the problem exists is that SCAG’s track record is a miserable one.  In our book, we carefully analyzed thirty years of SCAG reports for how their authors viewed the present and future of the Southern California regional economy.  They got it wrong about 95% of the time, hardly ever mentioning the new economy of IT and new forms of entrepreneurship.  They looked backward to the old days of manufacturing.  They advocated strengthening low-wage industries such as logistics.  This was actually before Mr. Ikhrata took up his job at SCAG, so we can’t hold him responsible for the errors of his predecessors. All the more reason for him not to be defensive, but instead to turn his organization around to be realistic, admit the problem, and get to work helping the governments of Southern California to change their vision and move forward into the 21st century.  The well-being of millions of people depends on it.

Reagan Fellowship recipient Sydney Ganon MPP ’17 Leadership, integrity, drive, and citizenship are qualities that leaders should have

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By Breanna Ramos
UCLA Luskin Student Writer

Leadership, integrity, drive, and citizenship are qualities that leaders should have —  Sydney Ganon (MPP ’17) has them all.

Ganon is the second recipient of the Ronald Reagan Public Policy Fellowship, an annual award. Through the support of The Reagan Presidential Foundation and The Draine Family Charitable Foundation, UCLA Luskin students apply to receive up to $30,000 for the two-year Fellowship. Upon hearing the news, Ganon declined offers to other schools.

As a Fellow, there are a number of requirements the recipient must uphold, academic strength being one of them.  Ganon, who graduated from the University of Vermont (cum laude with a B.A. in Anthropology and English is pursuing her MPP with a focus on educational policy and quantitative analysis.

“I’m interested in learning about the cross-sections between education and other policy, such as education and health, education and environment,” Ganon said. “I like that the broad program at UCLA lets me look at those other factors.”

Recipients also must have a keen interest in public policy and assisting in the local community. At the Knowledge is Power Program New York City (KIPP NYC), which is a national network of public charter schools, Ganon was heavily involved: from organizing volunteers to connecting students’ families with local officials through lobbying.

“I’m really happy that I worked before going to grad school,” Ganon said. “If I hadn’t worked at KIPP, I would have never known that education was what I wanted to have as my career. The experience totally shaped where I wanted to go.”

A key part of the Fellowship is access to Reagan’s Presidential Library. As a part of the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Presidential Learning Center’s internship program, Ganon must complete 100 internship hours at the library. Over the two-year Fellowship, the internship hours will give Ganon the time she wants to research Reagan’s educational policies.

“One of the incredible things about the Fellowship is that you get to see and learn about things from the politician’s side,” Ganon explained. “In order to create change, you have to understand what’s going on from both sides.”

Upon earning her MPP, Ganon plans on pursuing a career that provides opportunities to improve education for all.

“I would like to be working pretty specifically in education analytics, either with a school district or the state,” Ganon elaborated. “I want to be heavily involved in student data and test scores, using that information to make schools better.”

 

Inequality is Focus of New Issue of Blueprint Income and wealth inequality is the focus of the newly release issue of Blueprint

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By Stan Paul

Income and wealth inequality is the focus of the newly released issue of Blueprint, a UCLA partnership with the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

The second edition is once again led by editor-in-chief, Jim Newton, a 25-year veteran reporter and editor for the Los Angeles Times.

“American inequality decreased in the 1950s, only to explode in the 1970s and ’80s and to expand yet again during the recent recession,” writes Newton in the introduction.

Included in the Fall 2015 “Table Talk” section is an interview with economics Nobel Laureate and former presidential adviser, Joseph Stiglitz, author of the influential 2012 book, The Price of Inequality. Los Angeles Times editorial writer and deputy editorial page editor, Jon Healey, interviewed Stiglitz on subjects ranging from taxes and growth since the great recession to minimum wage and basic fairness.

“…we have become one of the nations among the advanced countries with the least opportunity. In the United States, the life chances of young people are more dependent on the income and education of their parents than in almost any other advanced country,” Stiglitz comments.

Research and profiles by noted journalists and scholars in this second edition include a look at leadership in Los Angeles, the physical suffering of the poor, unequal schools, wages and the middle class, and economic growth. Blueprint’s “Landscape” section includes writing on voter turnout (by Newton) as well as pieces on the working poor and same-sex marriage.

“We are more about conversations, writes Newton, adding, “I hope the pieces contained here will start some of those conversations, as policy makers and others who care about society consider inequality and how it shapes neighborhoods and destinies. Few questions more define our history; few are more important to consider and address.”

A public discussion led by Jim Newton is set for Oct. 21 at the California Endowment in Los Angeles. Scheduled discussants are: former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, Homeboy Industries’ Father Greg Boyle and the California Endowment’s Robert Ross.

For more information and registration, please go to: http://blueprint.ucla.edu/event/public-discussion-thoughtful-l-a-leaders-on-poverty-and-politics/

Read the newly released second edition online at: Blueprint.ucla.edu

 

Takahashi Named UCLA Luskin Interim Dean The Urban Planning and Asian American studies professor will lead the School during the search for Dean Gilliam’s permanent successor

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Lois M. Takahashi, a professor of Urban Planning and Asian American studies and a noted scholar on service delivery to vulnerable populations, will serve as interim dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Scott Waugh announced today.

Takahashi assumes the leadership role from Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., who was named chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in May.

A member of the UCLA faculty since 2001, Takahashi is professor of urban planning and of Asian American studies. In addition to her current service as associate dean of research at UCLA Luskin and as associate director of the University of California Asian American and Pacific Islander Policy Multicampus Research Program, she has also served as chair of the Department of Urban Planning (2011-13) and chair of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center’s Faculty Advisory Committee (2010-13).

Outside UCLA, Takahashi is the vice president/president-elect of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, a board member of the Western Center on Law & Poverty and a member of the editorial boards of three journals: Journal of Planning Education and Research, Journal of the American Planning Association, and AIDS Education and Prevention. A National Institutes of Health-funded scholar, her research focuses on public and social service delivery to vulnerable populations in the U.S. and Southeast Asian cities, HIV/AIDS, homelessness and environmental governance. She has published more than 60 articles and chapters, and she is the author of Homelessness, AIDS, and Stigmatization: The NIMBY Syndrome in the United States at the End of the Twentieth Century and a co-author of Rethinking Environmental Management in the Pacific Rim: Exploring Local Participation in Bangkok, Thailand.

Takahashi received a Ph.D. in urban planning from the University of Southern California, an M.S. in public management and policy/architecture from Carnegie Mellon University and an A.B. in architecture from UC Berkeley.

In the coming months, Provost Waugh will form a committee to search for candidates to permanently serve as dean of UCLA Luskin.

 

Study: New P.E. Curriculum Triples Performance on Test Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris led a study that found positive results for the UCLA Health "Sound Body Sound Mind" physical education curriculum

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By Amy Albin
UCLA Health

A physical education program that brings commercial-grade fitness equipment to under-resourced schools, along with a curriculum based on boosting confidence and making participation more enjoyable, dramatically increases students’ performance on California’s standardized physical fitness test, a UCLA study has found.

Publishing in the July issue of the Journal of Education and Training Studies, Urban Planning professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris reported that the UCLA Health Sound Body Sound Mind curriculum tripled the percentage of students who passed the state Fitnessgram test in schools where it was implemented — from an average passage rate of 20 percent prior to the curriculum’s initiation to an average passage rate of 60 percent after its completion. The study also found that students’ confidence levels, enjoyment of physical activity and knowledge about fitness increased following the program.

“I was not expecting that in such a short time one could see such a big difference in the kids’ fitness performance,” said Loukaitou-Sideris. “A curriculum such as this could go a long way toward motivating children to be more active and fighting obesity, particularly in low-income communities where such efforts are most needed.”

Loukaitou-Sideris, along with a team of UCLA graduate students, followed 640 students attending five inner-city Los Angeles schools during the academic year 2012-2013. The students, who ranged from seventh to 10th grade, spent eight weeks taking physical education classes that followed the Sound Body Sound Mind curriculum. Students, parents and physical education teachers were asked to respond to questionnaires before and after the students completed the curriculum. The researchers also interviewed teachers and analyzed students’ Fitnessgram scores.

“Further research is needed to evaluate the impact of the SBSM curriculum on students in more schools, and especially to look at the impact on students of various ages, ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds, as well the long-term impact of the program,” added Loukaitou-Sideris.

Sound Body Sound Mind has been implemented in nearly 100 middle and high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the vast majority of them in low-income communities. More than 400 educators have been trained on the curriculum. The Sound Body Sound Mind Foundation was created by philanthropists Cindy and Bill Simon in 1999, and became part of UCLA Health earlier this year.

Approximately 23 percent of children and young people under the age of 18 in Los Angeles County are obese, and another 19 percent are overweight, as measured by body mass index. Low-income communities tend to offer limited access to free and safe spaces for physical activity outside of school, making it more difficult for children from those communities to get regular exercise.

Sound Body Sound Mind addresses this problem with state-of-the-art fitness programs and a unique curriculum that includes 30 lesson plans focused on mastering basic physical tasks. All of the activities are designed for small spaces, so they don’t require gyms or large multipurpose rooms, which many inner-city schools lack.

“At the core of the teaching strategy is creating a welcoming environment, removing intimidation and demonstrating to students that they can improve their fitness by focusing on their own achievement rather than comparing themselves to others,” said Nathan Nambiar, executive director of the Sound Body Sound Mind Foundation and community engagement manager at UCLA Health. Nambiar says that students are never asked to perform in front of others and, since everyone is moving at once, they don’t worry that others are watching.

At Alliance Alice M. Baxter College-Ready High School, a public charter school in San Pedro, the initiation of the Sound Body Sound Mind program last fall resulted in a dramatic increase in the percentage of students passing the FITNESSGRAM test — from 37 percent to 82 percent.

“It’s changed the entire outlook our students have on fitness,” said Brooklin Brumund, athletic director at the school, which was not part of the study. “A lot of these kids come from families where exercise and healthy lifestyles are not promoted. Many have never been involved in recreational sports. At the beginning some of them complained about hating anything physically strenuous, and now they are running miles, passing the physical fitness test, and showing confidence that they’ve never had before. It’s been an amazing transformation.”

The study was funded by a donation from the UCLA Dream Fund.