By Mary Braswell

The mission of the UCLA Voting Rights Project (VRP) is straightforward: creating an accessible and equitable system of voting for all Americans.

The U.S. election of 2020, just two years after VRP was launched, showed how critical this mission had become.

Housed at the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, the project has always had a strong public service ethos with an emphasis on scholarship. It seeks to train young lawyers and expert witnesses, develop new social science theories for voting rights cases, and advance the right to free and fair balloting through national and local public policy.

In the run-up to the Nov. 3 presidential election, the project’s leaders spent considerable time in the courtroom as well as the classroom, as voter suppression cases cropped up across the country.

In Texas, civil rights attorney Chad Dunn, VRP’s director of litigation, led a number of legal efforts to protect the rights of voters. Dunn defended the drive-through voting option in largely Democratic Harris County, which survived a series of Republican-led challenges.

Dunn also appeared in federal court to argue against the Texas governor’s attempt to limit ballot boxes to one per county. Professor Matt Barreto, VRP faculty director, co-authored a data-rich report showing that the rule would particularly burden disabled, elderly and minority voters, but the governor’s order was upheld by the Texas Supreme Court.

In Pennsylvania, Barreto submitted an expert report arguing against efforts by President Trump’s reelection campaign to place several restrictions on voting. These included eliminating ballot drop boxes and creating new rules for disqualifying ballots.

Some of the cases continued to be litigated well past Election Day.

By Mary Braswell

Candler Weinberg started his internship with the U.S. Forest Service in the fall of 2020, just as record-setting wildfires spreading across the West provided a grim illustration of the growing threat of climate change.

The position was a perfect fit for the public affairs major, a licensed EMT who aspires to enter the field of emergency management — and who has himself come face to face with natural disaster.

Weinberg’s family home was among hundreds destroyed during the 2017 wildfires in the Sonoma Valley winemaking region.

“It was just completely devastating,” said Weinberg, describing the fast-moving flames that overwhelmed fire department resources and the lack of planning that could have saved lives.

“It’s going to keep happening. And unless we learn from our mistakes and try to plan for the future, it’s just going to be this vicious cycle that never ends,” he said.

So Weinberg is taking full advantage of UCLA Luskin resources to build research, policy and planning skills to help other communities withstand disasters sparked by climate change.

His Forest Service internship is one step in that journey, made possible through his participation in the University of California’s Washington Center, or UCDC.

Over the summer and fall, a total of 17 public affairs majors and pre-majors took advantage of courses and internships through UCDC and its California-based counterpart, UC Sacramento, said Kevin Medina, who coordinates the Experiential Learning Capstone and other internship opportunities for the undergraduate program.

Learning by doing is a hallmark of the UCLA Luskin bachelor’s degree. The 72 members of this year’s inaugural graduating class will be the first to complete the yearlong senior capstone, which calls on students to immerse themselves in an organization, assess its needs and create a solution.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, almost all the internships will be conducted remotely, which creates both challenges and opportunities, Medina said.

As with any virtual connection, students may encounter technological difficulties and they will miss the in-office experience of working on a team. But one upside, Medina said, is that “the remote internships allowed us to think beyond a geographic restriction and paved the way for partnerships beyond the Los Angeles region.” He added that those without access to reliable transportation will be spared the added time and expense of commuting to a work site.

“The supervisors at our inaugural internship sites are dedicated to providing an intentional and high-quality experience where our public affairs majors can learn and contribute their knowledge,” Medina said. “Given this unprecedented time, our students are receiving the quality training they need to enter professional public service roles and graduate programs.”

Since transferring into the major in 2019, Weinberg has embraced the program’s hands-on opportunities. For his capstone experience, he will work with the Van Nuys office of Bob Hertzberg, majority leader of the California State Senate, while continuing his full-year Forest Service internship.

Last spring, he petitioned to conduct a research project for course credit under the direction of Professor Fernando Torres-Gil, head of the Luskin School’s Center for Policy Research on Aging. Weinberg reviewed case studies of fires, mudslides and other disasters and found an alarming lack of planning in place to meet the needs of the state’s senior population.

“Those policies are practically non-existent,” he discovered.

At another internship, Weinberg helped share the stories of those who fought in World War II and other U.S. conflicts. During the summer-long position with the Veterans Administration, he verified service records and tracked down family members to help collect and preserve the soldiers’ legacies.

And in his Forest Service internship, Weinberg is analyzing data on injuries to firefighters, law enforcement officers and visitors to help build a comprehensive emergency services plan to replace the patchwork of practices in federal forests and grasslands around the country. He’s also crafting congressional briefs on the importance of urban forestry, the green spaces that bring health and economic benefits to a community.

As an emergency medical technician, Weinberg has provided critical care on rural 911 routes and other locations, but he said he realized he could make a greater impact by helping shape disaster management policy.

When he discovered the Luskin School’s new public affairs major, “I realized that UCLA was going to be the best place for me as a research-heavy institution with a lot of academic freedom,” he said. “The breadth of professors and classes is really world-class and I think unmatched for an undergraduate program.”

At the Luskin School and beyond, Weinberg aspires to help overlooked communities create a sustainable living environment in the face of a warming climate.

“I’ve always been passionate about helping vulnerable populations,” he said. “That’s really what drew me to public health and then to policy, to be a voice for people who might not have much of a voice.”

By Les Dunseith

At a university, the roles are generally understood. Faculty educate and engage in research. Students learn from and assist faculty. Staff take care of administrative details. Donors, many of them alumni, provide supplemental funds and act as mentors. The dean sets priorities and fosters a vision.

Less understood, however, are the volunteer leaders from business, government and the nonprofit sectors who provide guidance to deans and academic directors — the boards of advisors.

Several such boards exist at the School, either working directly with Dean Gary Segura and his staff or offering advice to individual research centers. As interested observers, they are less likely to get mired in day-to-day minutia and instead think about the big picture, dreaming of how things could be better at the School, within academia or in society as a whole.

“Our commitment to the School is, obviously, to be ambassadors but also to be active participants,” said Jeffrey Seymour, a longtime member of the UCLA Luskin Board of Advisors who is currently serving as chair. That participation means attending meetings and serving on subcommittees that deal with aspects such as event planning, philanthropy or mentorship. It also involves building bridges.

“We’ve been aggressive this year with efforts to reach out to local government, bringing elected and appointed decisionmakers to Luskin with the goal of creating partnerships between us,” explained Seymour, noting recent engagements with the city and county of Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood and others.

“This provides opportunities both for Luskin and for the public sector to access the scholarly resources coming from Luskin and UCLA,” he said. Seymour is well-versed in such academic-government partnerships thanks to a 40-year career in government relations and his tenures with the University of California Regents, UC Alumni Associations and UCLA Alumni Association. He is a former president of both alumni groups.

Connecting scholars to government and community leaders is at the heart of the Luskin Summit, which focuses on timely policy issues during discussions led by faculty experts. The idea originated with the Board of Advisors and a subcommittee helps set the agenda.

The first Luskin Summit in 2019 exceeded expectations, drawing about 300 people to the UCLA campus. Then came the coronavirus pandemic, and the second Summit had to suddenly change to a virtual series of discussions. The impact? More than 10,000 participants.

Future summits are likely to continue having a virtual element.

“No matter what happens after COVID, we obviously have great resources here on campus, and we’ve proven that we can virtually expand the audience for this kind of program,” Seymour said.

Other advisory boards at UCLA Luskin also have successfully helped faculty and staff evolve programming to meeting changing needs. For example, JR DeShazo, director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation (LCI), was moved to act after witnessing how wildfires, heat waves and storms disproportionately impact marginalized communities. He envisioned a gathering of top climate researchers to forge a path forward.

So he sought out assistance from LCI Advisory Board members such as Cynthia Hirschhorn, founder of the Women’s Civic Action Network, or Civicas; Jonathan Parfrey, executive director of the nonprofit Climate Resolve; and Alfredo Gonzales, Southern California director of the Resources Legacy Fund.

These leaders and their organizations helped LCI plan and execute the first-of-its-kind Climate Adaptation Research Symposium in September. Also pivoting from an in-person gathering because of the pandemic, the symposium ultimately drew 2,000 people from 47 U.S. states and 58 countries to hear 70 of the nation’s climate adaptation leaders present 17 virtual sessions in a single day.

At the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS), guidance from both the Advisory Board and a Steering Committee that draws from transit agencies, environmental groups, urban planners and other stakeholders helped event organizers recast a signature symposium not only as a virtual experience but also one with an enhanced focus on racial equity.

For nearly three decades, the annual UCLA Lake Arrowhead Symposium has brought researchers together with practitioners, elected officials and private sector stakeholders to zero in on issues related to transportation, land use and the environment. Under the theme “Not ‘Back to Normal’ – Mapping a Just Transportation Recovery from COVID-19,” this year’s online series made strategic equity a priority, an approach that is being adopted throughout the ITS operation.

The capacity to support the Luskin School and its research centers is a central tenet for people like Seymour, who has overseen a recent evolution of the Board of Advisors itself.

“We have implemented a board rotation, allowing us the opportunity to enlist new talent onto the board,” Seymour said.

The changes were implemented at the board’s October meeting, held virtually.

“We said thanks to some of our very longstanding board members who had provided much guidance and leadership,” said Nicole Payton, executive director of external relations at UCLA Luskin, “and they’ll be members of our board emeritus.”

New members “are very engaged in the community and provide broader representation and diversity. It was one of our key areas that we wanted to grow,” Payton said.

“We’ve been very lucky through the years to have really good people interested in being involved with Luskin,” Seymour said. “And one of the reasons why we implemented the rotation is that there are so many other people who want to get involved.”

The four new board members:

• Attorney Kafi Blumenfield Law ’97 is an expert on philanthropy and social justice who helped found Discovery Cube LA and has been president and CEO of Liberty Hill Foundation.
• Attorney Tom McLain specializes in international business transactions with an emphasis on intellectual property licensing related to the entertainment industry.
• Cynthia McClain Hill, also an attorney, earned her UCLA degree in political science in 1978 and her juris doctorate in ’81. McClain Hill founded her own law practice in the mid-1990s and has served on the Los Angeles Police Commission since 2016.
• Jacqueline Waggoner holds a UCLA degree in sociology and earned her master’s in urban planning at UCLA Luskin in 1996. She is the president of the Solutions division at Enterprise Community Partners, which operates 11 market offices across the country and delivers program, policy, advisory and capacity-building support at the national, state and local levels. Waggoner was also a member of the Committee for Greater LA, whose report reimagining Los Angeles from a racial equity perspective is highlighted elsewhere in this issue.