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Truth and Media in ‘a Perilous Time’ In a Luskin Lecture, Ray Suarez and 19 other journalists and scholars discuss the role of news reporting in a divided America

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By Zev Hurwitz and Stan Paul

At the end of a daylong symposium during which journalists, scholars and media pundits debated whether truth matters in a polarized United States, reporter and news anchor Ray Suarez summarized the condition of American politics vs. American journalism.

“The job of telling the truth is different than the job of getting elected,” Suarez said.

The former host of Al Jazeera America’s “Inside Story” and contributor to PBS “NewsHour” delivered the final Luskin Lecture of the academic year on May 25, 2017, capping a full day of programming that addressed a pertinent question: “Do Words Matter? Journalism, Communication and Alternative Truth.” The lecture and preceding panel discussions were sponsored by the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and held at the new Meyer & Renee Luskin Conference Center on the UCLA campus.

Suarez spoke about the role of the media in a world in which traditional journalism is trusted only marginally and the truth seems to matter less and less.

Referring to the recent contest for Montana’s only congressional seat in a special election, Suarez discussed newly elected Greg Gianforte’s body slam of a reporter from the Guardian on the eve of the election.

“Think about where we are — physical attacks on reporters asking questions. That’s the kind of thing that happens in Moscow, not in Montana,” Suarez said. “While we’re at a perilous time for the country and the world, respect for the news business keeps finding new lows.”

‘Truth Is Under Tremendous Stress’

Suarez told the audience of students, faculty and community members about a recent exchange he had on Twitter with a critic who was unhappy after Suarez appeared on Fox News. Suarez had argued for the use of unnamed sources in certain instances, and afterward he became engaged in a social media argument with the Twitter user, who was convinced that President Trump won the 2016 election’s popular vote. In fact, Trump lost the popular vote by almost 3 million ballots.

“Truth is under tremendous stress in the United States,” Suarez said. “Observable, countable, measurable, testable truth now has to fight on an even playing field with your feelings. At the risk of pointing out the obvious, your feelings don’t carry the burden of evidence that truth does.”

Most fake news has an obvious slant, but biased reporting leads to public distrust of reporting, Suarez said. This mistrust of media threatens the ability of journalists to cover stories.

Suarez’s lecture was followed by a conversation with Gary Segura, dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Segura, who had been interviewed by Suarez for stories in the past, talked about how much he admires the integrity of impartial journalists.

“I have great respect for journalists and especially those who persevere in pursuing objectivity — especially in the face of those who hold power in Washington,” Segura said during introductory remarks. “Ray Suarez is one of those journalists.”

Focusing on the state of media during the Trump presidency, the lecture followed these three panels: “The 2016 Campaign and Media Impact,” “The Face/Place of Media During the Trump Administration” and “Truth or Trolls.”

Gary Segura, dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and Ray Suarez take questions from the audience after Suarez delivered the Luskin Lecture. Photo by George Foulsham

 

‘Truth is a Really, Really Big Deal’

Segura opened the day, talking about the importance of the UCLA Luskin commitment to “the value of information.”

“If we did not take Mr. Trump seriously before, we sure do now,” Segura said. “We have to understand the demonization of the press. … We find ourselves in a moment where reporting the truth is a really, really big deal.”

Sasha Issenberg, journalist and author of “The Victory Lab, the Secret Science of Winning Campaigns,” served as moderator of the first panel, which addressed the question of whether the news media played a key role in President Trump’s upset victory on Nov. 8, 2016.

“Should we be thinking differently about that question as it pertains to 2016?” Issenberg asked Lynn Vavreck, professor of political science and communication studies at UCLA.

“I think the answer to that question is no,” Vavreck said. “The media doesn’t really tell voters what to think, what positions to hold on issues, for example, but it does do a great job of telling voters what to think about.”

With nearly four decades in public service, panelist Zev Yaroslavky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, said of the 2016 election, “Overall, what troubled me about that campaign was that it set a new low on what constitutes acceptable for discourse in the political realm in our country.”

Segura moderated the second panel discussion, asking how the press will be able to cover a new administration that is seemingly playing it by ear, intentionally excluding select larger mainstream media from some press briefings.

‘The Leaky White House’

Adam Nagourney, West Coast bureau chief of the New York Times, said that, as a former White House reporter during the Clinton administration, he found the day-to-day job could be boring: “You’re getting fed stuff” that may be inconsequential, he said. But, he added, “You want someone in the White House keeping track of what’s going on.”

Of Trump, Nagourney noted that this has been “the most leaky White House that has ever existed.”

Nick Goldberg, editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times, said he once spent time on the East Coast as a reporter but now loves covering national politics from the West Coast. “I Iike being in a place where we think about different issues” outside of the Washington bubble, Goldberg said.

For VOX video producer Carlos Maza, the “palace intrigue” is fascinating, but he explained, “The problems or risks of being so close to the White House is that it may not affect the material conditions of most people’s lives.” It all amounts to background noise for most Americans, distracting from other issues, Maza said.

Segura asked La Opinión writer and editor Pilar Marrero, who has years of experience covering social and political issues in the Latino community, if policy issues are being drowned out by the current “circus environment” in Washington.

“We’ve always lived in a different universe from the mainstream media,” Marrero said. “We all know this particular White House is focused on immigration issues and on what happens to a large part of the audience I cater to.”

Marrero said that her coverage concentrates on budget cuts or executive orders that impact her audience. “Our main focus continues to be the person who was deported next door,” she said. “Every day we are covering heartbreaking family separations,” which the mainstream media seldom do.

Kevin Roderick, director of UCLA Newsroom and a former editor at the Los Angeles Times, is the longtime editor of the media watchdog website L.A. Observed. He moderated the panel “Truth or Trolls,” which featured five former or current journalists and UCLA Professor of Communication Studies Tim Groeling, who has researched historical media trends.

“I do not like the term fake news,” Groeling said. “It is so nebulous and open to interpretation that it is easily appropriated by a lot of different figures, including the President, to attack news in a variety of ways. I think it’s too unspecific to be useful.

‘We’ve Seen This Before’

The current era is closer to 19th-century news than 20th-century news, in Groeling’s view. “The period of time that most social science theory was developed regarding the media is a time that was historically weird. We are much closer to something like the 19th century where you have a lot of competing organizations. It’s very easy to start a new competitor. They’re very personalized. They’re very emotional. They’re less attached to the truth and professionalism than we’ve been used to,” he said. “So we’ve seen this before.”

Panelist Doris Truong, Washington Post home page editor, recalled how she was trolled by thousands of Trump followers after someone saw a video of a woman snapping photos near the table where Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had testified during his confirmation hearings. Trump fans posted the video on social media and wrongly decided that it was Truong. Her life turned upside-down for several weeks.

“It was a little bit shocking,” Truong recalled. “Some right-wing Twitter account said, ‘Oh, this is Doris Truong of the Washington Post. She should be fired.’ People just ran with that.”

The next day, “I wake up around 7 and I have all of these messages from my friends saying, ‘Oh my god, your accounts are exploding, and I wanted to rebut this.’ Then Drudge Report picked it up. That’s where it snowballed,” Truong said.

Two major conservative websites ran with it, and Truong faced a deluge of vicious criticism. Washington Post officials sent notes to Drudge and other websites to clarify that it wasn’t Truong, but that didn’t stop Reddit users and other web commenters from touting what Truong called a “conspiracy theory.”

“It was so crazy and so far-fetched,” she said.

To view more photos from this Luskin Lecture, go here.

View videos from the panel discussions and the keynote address by Ray Suarez below.

 

Food for Thought — and Sustainability The first class of UCLA Food Studies scholars receives certificates at Luskin School celebration

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By Stan Paul

Five master’s and Ph.D. students from across the UCLA campus are the first graduates of the Food Studies Certificate program administered through the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

The students — all completing their graduate programs at UCLA this year — were awarded their certificates by Wendy Slusser, associate vice provost from UCLA’s Healthy Campus Initiative, at a celebration and networking event held May 24, 2017, at the Luskin School.

The certificate program, open to all UCLA graduate students, stems from the University of California’s systemwide Global Food Initiative started in 2014 by UC President Janet Napolitano, as well as work already under way at UCLA, recognizing the vital importance of food security, equity and sustainability as a persistent and growing global concern.

Among the evening’s guests was Evan Kleiman, host of the KCRW radio program “Good Food.” The chef, author and radio show host has been a continuing “supporter of all things food studies on campus,” said Alexis Oberlander, department of urban planning graduate advisor and project manager for the Food Studies Certificate program based at Luskin.

The first class began taking courses in fall 2016 starting with a food studies colloquium stressing the cross-disciplinary nature of the growing field ranging from cultural anthropology, geography, law, urban planning, sociology and public health to technology, cell biology and environmental science to name a few. Some of the courses offered through the program focus on food policy and systems, nutrition, cultural aspects of food, maternal and child nutrition, literature, global health, the city as well as family nutrition locally and abroad.

This year’s certificate recipients include Jocelyn Harrison, Nandini Inmula and Meghan O’Connel, all completing their master of public health (MPH) degrees; Yan Wang, completing his Ph.D. in biostatistics; and, Tyler Watson, completing his doctoral program in environmental health sciences.

“All five students were interested in food studies before joining the certificate program, but they all agree that the certificate excels at connecting people from different disciplines,” Oberlander said. She explained that the program helped the students step outside their comfort zones and learn about the interdisciplinary nature of food studies. “That’s what this program is all about. I hope we can continue growing from that point,” said Oberlander, who also helped develop the program at Luskin.

The ceremony also included recognition of 14 new students who have been accepted into the 2017-18 program from across campus. Among the incoming group is Karen Diaz, a master of urban planning and master of public health (MURP/MPH) student who also served as the Food Studies project assistant.

“As a MURP/MPH student, the food studies certificate program is a no-brainer,” said Diaz, who was a community organizer and garden school educator in New Mexico before coming to graduate school at UCLA. “When I began to apply to graduate schools, I was looking for programs that would allow me to specialize in my niche interests of the built environment and communal health in communities of color with a focus on environmental and food justice.”

Diaz, who also is a teaching assistant for the UCLA course “Good Food for Everyone — Health Sustainability and Culture,” said she was inspired to analyze power structures, and how they benefited certain people and excluded others in her community of southeast Los Angeles. “I was inspired to apply as a dual applicant to better understand these power dynamics and to better help leverage resources in my own community,” she said.

More information about the Food Studies Certificate program can be found online.

 

A Grassroots Mission in Watts UCLA Luskin’s Watts Leadership Institute launches a 10-year program to build a legacy of leaders and empowerment

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By George Foulsham

WATTS — If you’re searching for the heartbeat of the UCLA Watts Leadership Institute, look no further than 10360 Wilmington Ave. in Los Angeles. What was once a liquor store is now the home of the multi-faceted Watts Century Latino Organization.

On a recent Saturday, more than 70 volunteers gathered here to help with a grassroots task: assemble and plant a community garden. The event was part of the citywide Sharefest Community Workday, but it represented much more for Jorja Leap, an adjunct professor of social welfare in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and for the Watts Leadership Institute’s first cohort — community members who hold the key to deepening the indigenous leadership of Watts.

“This is the beginning,” Leap said as the volunteers spread mulch around four large planter boxes. “We’re going to be bringing in youth from the various middle and high schools throughout the area. They’re going to be learning about gardening, they’re going to be learning about healthy eating, and they’re going to be developing strategies for contributing to their community.”

It’s just one example of what the Watts Leadership Institute hopes to bring to a part of L.A. that Leap has been engaged in since she was a social welfare graduate student at UCLA in the 1970s. Leap and project partner Karrah Lompa MSW ’13 have launched an institute that’s making a 10-year commitment to Watts.

The Watts Leadership Institute received its key initial funding through a two-year, $200,000 grant from the California Wellness Foundation. In turn, the WLI GRoW Community Garden is supported by a two-year, $100,000 grant from GRoW @ Annenberg, a philanthropic initiative led by Gregory Annenberg Weingarten, dedicated to supporting humanitarian efforts across the globe as well as innovative projects in health, education, the arts and civic & cultural life. The Sharefest Community Workday provided additional support for the community garden from Sharefest, the Mars Corporation and Our Foods.

“This kind of a public-private partnership, along with the research attached to it — and the building of the Watts community — really represent the best of how all of these different factors can come together,” Leap said. “It represents part of UCLA’s continuing and growing commitment to communities like Watts that need our involvement, our engagement, our organizing, our research. We’re also learning from them and being taught by them.”

Jorja Leap, right, director of the Watts Leadership Institute, with Betty Day, president of the Watts Gang Task Force. Photo by George Foulsham

The garden project marked the first time that the institute’s cohort was able to engage Watts residents — and many other volunteers — in the community garden, according to Lompa. “The community was able to get their hands dirty, to help make the garden a reality and to take ownership,” she said. “The volunteers included cohort members, institute fellows, UCLA students and alumni, community members, corporate volunteers and representatives from the Annenberg Foundation. It was everybody coming together to launch the community garden.”

Among the community members in the institute’s first cohort are Pahola Ybarra and her father, Arturo Ybarra. Pahola is program manager and Arturo is the founder and executive director of the Watts Century Latino Organization, which has galvanized the growing Latino population in Watts. The center’s programs are credited with helping to build significant bridges between Latinos and African-Americans. To accomplish this, Pahola and Arturo are among the community leaders recruited by Leap as part of the initial leadership cohort in the institute.

When she approached the Ybarras about becoming part of the institute, Leap asked for guidance about the best way to bring Latinos in the community aboard. Pahola suggested teaching Latino leaders how to start a 501(c)3 nonprofit as a way to “teach them how to do bigger things in the community,” Ybarra said.

It’s only 2.1 square miles, but Watts has more than 190 nonprofits. The problem, according to Ybarra, is that there has always been overlap in the services offered by the various nonprofits.

“What Watts Leadership did was to help us come together, to put our resources together, and be an example for the rest of the nonprofit and leadership community in Watts,” Ybarra said. “It’s been an amazing effort to help us grow, and to help us get out of our own way. It encourages us to reach for as much as we can and do as much as we can in the community.”

Leap often draws upon social welfare professor Zeke Hasenfeld’s Luskin research, which initially characterized Watts as a “nonprofit desert,” but she’s hoping the institute can change that perception by training the first cohort of leaders who will then share their knowledge with a second and a third generation. One of the institute’s goals is to build a comprehensive infrastructure of nonprofits in Watts and use it as a model to build indigenous leadership. That was part of the strategy of the WLI GRoW Community Garden and it was kicked off on this volunteer day.

“This probably doesn’t look like an economic development project now,” said John Jones III, field deputy for Los Angeles City Councilman Joe Buscaino, who represents Watts. “But in the future, when things are growing from here, different businesses might come and buy the fruits and vegetables from here that will help this nonprofit thrive.”

Jones credits Leap and Lompa with teaching community members how to build a better community. “When the Watts Institute grows, this organization will be stronger, it will be better, and the Watts community will be better because of the lessons they learned,” Jones said.

That legacy approach is key to the success of the institute, Leap said.

“We will serve those within the community who will lead and will teach,” she said. “This way, we not only build capacity, we build a continuum of leadership that is cross-generational. Luskin is not going to leave, but we ultimately want Watts in the lead.”

Cohort member Kathryn Wooten, the founder and executive director of Loving Hands Community Care, is a lifelong resident of Watts whose organization was struggling until she was recruited by Leap to be a part of the institute. As part of the cohort training, Wooten and others were provided with computers and trained in how to use them.

“It’s almost too good to be true,” Wooten said. “Since I’ve been a part of it, my organization is more professional. I have all the things I need to run a business because of the cohort and their guidance. I now know how to use a computer.”

Leap’s approach to this project is motivated by a powerful sense of duty.

“This is my way of paying back,” she said. “I did come here in 1978 as a very callow MSW student, and the Watts community took me under its wing and taught me. UCLA afforded me the opportunity to learn here. This community has given a great deal to me, and it is my responsibility and my honor to pay that back, to listen and to really serve in the most meaningful way that I can.”

Martin Wachs Honored for Outstanding Research and Scholarly Work Urban planning scholar and transportation planner to receive UCLA’s 2016-17 Edward A. Dickson Emeritus Professorship Award

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By Stan Paul

Martin Wachs

Martin Wachs has spent a life and career in transportation planning, but the emeritus professor of urban planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs doesn’t plan on hitting the brakes any time soon.

“I have had an extremely rewarding and long career, but I can’t quit now because urban transportation is facing its greatest challenges since the invention of the automobile,” said Wachs, who has been named a recipient of the 2016-17 Edward A. Dickson Emeritus Professorship Award at UCLA.

The award honors outstanding research, scholarly work, teaching and service performed by an emeritus or emerita professor since retirement. It also includes $5,000 funded from a gift endowment established by the late Edward A. Dickson, who served as a Regent of the University of California (1913-46).

Following a 25-year career at UCLA, Wachs continued his teaching and research at UC Berkeley and then at the RAND Corp. until his 2011 return to UCLA where he has continued to teach, conduct research, mentor, consult, and serve on numerous committee and advisory boards.

Most recently, he served as an international design competition juror for a remake of the historic Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan, N.Y. Wachs said he also has been invited to be a juror in a competition to design a new Gangnam Intermodal Transit Terminal in Seoul, South Korea.

Wachs said it’s especially rewarding to be able to share his many years of experience and learning with the Luskin School’s urban planning students.

“I have had the great pleasure of working on many complex real-world projects and bringing what I learned from them into the classroom to benefit my students,” Wachs said. “UCLA graduate students in Urban Planning were outstanding when I arrived on campus in 1971, but they seem to get stronger every year. I keep learning by working with the latest generation of emerging scholars.”

Wachs will receive his award May 10, 2017, at the annual UCLA Emeriti Association dinner.

Community Choice Is Transforming the California Energy Industry Report by UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation researchers finds that Community Choice Aggregators provide a competitive alternative for electricity consumers

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By George Foulsham

J.R. DeShazo

After decades of dominance by electricity monopolies, California is experiencing the emergence of community choice aggregators, a new type of utility that provides cities and counties the opportunity to choose what kinds of energy to purchase for their needs.

Community choice aggregation allows cities and counties in California (and other states that have enacted it) to group individual customers’ purchasing power within a defined jurisdiction to buy energy. In California, community choice aggregators are legally defined by state law as electric service providers.

These aggregators, or CCAs, have introduced competition into historically protected, investor-owned utility territories. In doing so, they have given eligible California customers a choice of retail energy providers. Since 2010, California communities have established eight CCAs. More than a dozen additional communities are making strides toward switching to CCAs.

“California is headed toward transformation with this rapid development of community choice aggregation programs,” said J.R. DeShazo, principal investigator for a new report by the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, part of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. “Our report highlights the benefits of CCAs while identifying unresolved policy questions that must be addressed by state regulators.”

According to the report, CCAs in California generally offer a larger share of renewable energy — up to 25 percent more — compared to the investor-owned utility in the same area. “We estimate that these efforts resulted in a total reduction of approximately 600,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2016 — the equivalent of $7.5 million in reductions at the 2016 carbon price of $12.73 per metric ton on the statewide carbon market,” DeShazo said.

CCAs offer greener energy at a competitive price, according to Julien Gattaciecca, Luskin Center researcher and lead author of the study.

“CCAs have recently entered the energy market, allowing them to benefit from a long decline of falling wholesale renewable energy costs,” Gattaciecca said. “Some CCAs also offer larger incentives than their local investor-owned utility to households and businesses that self-generate energy through rooftop solar programs, and some have made the commitment to source energy from local renewable facilities, and directly own local solar facilities.”

DeShazo, who is a professor of public policy at the Luskin School, added: “Community choice aggregation is currently the best policy tool available to cities and counties who want to tailor energy procurement to their community’s preferences. The stakes are high. Regulators are grappling with important policy decisions that could affect the future of the energy market as well as the pocketbooks of Californians.”

With investor-owned utilities facing increasing competition, the study concludes that more choices can only benefit consumers, with the right regulations in place.

“Currently, an important part of the load in California is looking at CCAs,” Gattaciecca said. “The three major investor-owned utilities could see between 50 and 80 percent of their load departing for CCAs or direct access providers by 2025 or 2030.”

The eight operational California CCAs are Marin Clean Energy, Sonoma Clean Power, Lancaster Choice Energy, CleanPower San Francisco, Peninsula Clean Energy in San Mateo County, Apple Valley Choice Energy, Silicon Valley Clean Energy and Redwood Coast Energy Authority. Other CCAs expected to launch this year are East Bay Community Energy in Alameda County, Los Angeles Community Choice Energy and Valley Clean Energy Alliance in Yolo County and Davis.

Organized Protest May Come From the Fervor of Crowds, Not Core Individuals UCLA Luskin professor’s analysis of 14 million tweets from the Arab Spring showed that normal people drive huge movements

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By Stan Paul

The massive Arab Spring protests that began in late December 2010 and spread from North Africa to the Middle East generated huge crowds and had quick and profound effects — including the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who had held a firm grip on the country for decades.

Was this the work of people at the core of networks trying for years to create such a movement? Not according to research by Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld, assistant professor of public policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

In a paper published in “American Political Science Review,” Steinert-Threlkeld argues that individuals not central to a social network may be more responsible for generating collective action and driving protest than those at the center. Steinert-Threlkeld calls his theory of the periphery’s ability to mobilize “spontaneous collective action.”

“Protests occur as a result of decentralized coordination of individuals, and this coordination helps explain fluctuating levels of protest,” Steinert-Threlkeld wrote in the study, “Spontaneous Collective Action: Peripheral Mobilization During the Arab Spring.” Although not intended to explain the Arab Spring, Steinert-Threlkeld’s paper presents the first large-scale, systematic evidence of how individuals behaved in each country.

Unlike simple models such as disease contagion or transmission of news, which need only one exposure to infect or inform the next individual, the spreading of protests is more complex, making it less certain, said Steinert-Threlkeld, who teaches courses on these topics at the undergraduate and graduate levels at UCLA Luskin.

“Having someone tell you, ‘Hey, I’m going to protest tomorrow’ is much less impactful than having multiple people tell you they are protesting tomorrow,” he said. Large groups of people, as opposed to a few central individuals, are able to discuss “where to go, how to get there, when to go,” as well as what is going on once there, Steinert-Threlkeld added. In addition, individuals debating whether or not to protest must receive a credible signal that large numbers of people are protesting.

“Protests are a complex contagion phenomenon because increasing participation makes others more likely to join,” Steinert-Threlkeld said, pointing out that because more individuals are on the periphery than in the core of a network, protest is more likely to occur where the larger group is located. “The decision to participate in a protest appears to be driven by normal people taking cues from each other, not from elites.”

In testing his theory, Steinert-Threlkeld took advantage of the Integrated Conflict Early Warning System, a dataset of daily protests across 16 countries in the Middle East and North Africa during 14 months in 2010 and 2011. He then combined the dataset with geocoded, individual-level communications (nearly 14 million tweets from the same period), to measure the numbers of connections of each person.

“These 13,754,988 tweets show what was being said, when it was being said, where and how many connections each tweet author had,” he reported in the study. “Combining these datasets and using a wide range of models and operationalizations, mass mobilization is shown to occur through peripheral individuals.”

Said Steinert-Threlkeld: “Egypt’s January 25th protests surprised everyone — activists, bystanders and state authorities — with its large mobilization and brief occupation of Tahrir Square.”

He added that many Muslim Brotherhood leaders were summarily jailed — even though they did not sanction protests — because the Mubarak regime assumed only they could have mobilized such a crowd.

“This paper demonstrates the contributions big data can make to understanding processes of social influence in social networks,” he said.

A Speedy Solution to Networking A new format for the UCLA Luskin career event gives students direct access to alumni in their fields and fosters ideas about what they can do after graduation

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By Zev Hurwitz

Taking a cue from speed dating, the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs held its first alumni career networking event in which graduates of the school’s three departments met with current students about professional opportunities.

The event, held April 20, 2017, at the UCLA Faculty Center, was the first career development opportunity for students in which each employer was represented by an alumnus or alumna of the Luskin School.

Edon Cohanim, a first-year MPP student, said he appreciated the directness with which alumni provided tips on best practices.

“Alumni are more willing to help us and are more down-to-earth with us,” he said. “I got some advice on my career and how to pursue it, and they helped me understand what good moves are.”

Barbara Andrade-Dubransky MSW `00, director of program support at First 5 LA, said she hoped to help students understand more about career options in social welfare.

“There’s interest for students in knowing what’s going on out in the field, and I’m happy to share not only what I know about my organization, but I have relationships with other organizations, so I’m happy to share information to help students find other opportunities as well,” Andrade-Dubransky said.

UCLA Luskin Career Services launched Alumni Career Connections in lieu of its annual career fair. In past years, Luskin had held career events that more closely resembled traditional job fairs. This year, students met one-on-one with alumni who graduated from the same department or who currently work in the student’s desired field. Each student had the opportunity to meet with up to three alumni over the course of an hour.

Seth Jackson, left, senior director of energy and water programs at Climate Resolve, meets with UCLA Luskin pubic policy student Edon Cohanim. Photo by Aaron Julian

VC Powe, director of career services and leadership development at UCLA Luskin, said the change was in response to feedback from employers whose participation in the annual job fair had dwindled in recent years.

“For many employers, these small career fairs are passé,” she said. “I shared that with my student advisory committee, and one of the students said, ‘I want an alumni career fair.’ I lit up at the thought of that and said, ‘That’s a great idea!’”

Although many students attend career fairs in the hopes of finding a job, Powe noted that most UCLA Luskin students end up securing employment through networking.

“Networking, especially with alumni from your program, is extremely important,” she said. “This is more of a ‘We share a career-field, and am I prepared to do what you’re doing?’ kind of event.”

Alumni met with as many as eight students over the course of the evening. In all, 105 students and 42 alumni participated.

Jasneet Bains, a second-year, dual-degree graduate student in urban planning and public health, said she attended because she liked the structure of meeting with alumni from her programs and wanted to broaden her professional network.

“We were matched up with alumni who share our interests, and that’s very valuable,” Bains said. “They’re able to provide specific insight. Having gone through that process, they’re able to teach us about how to take knowledge from our program and apply that in the field.”

Adrian Cotta, a second-year MSW student, said he had no expectations about leaving the event with a job offer, but she hoped to learn from alumni who had the same educational experience as he did.

“I’m hoping to get some advice from people in the field to see how to begin a career — and make a new friend, if nothing else,” he said.

Wendy Yan MA UP `97, vice president of underwriting at affordable housing syndicator WNC and Associates, said that she attended not only to inform students about the field but also to recruit for summer internships and possibly full-time jobs.

“We’re always looking for good people,” Yan said. “Being an alum of the urban planning program, I know there are a lot of students who specialize in affordable housing, and so we’d love to have good people from Luskin work with us.”

Rima Zobayan MPP `01 currently works at Westat, focusing on an implementation project for national assessment on educational progress for the U.S. Department of Education.

“I was in the fourth class of public policy students, so there weren’t a lot of alumni who could participate in something like this for us,” Zobayan said. “It’s great for alums to have a chance to talk to current students, to share what we’re doing and to see what students’ interests might be.”

Autonomous Vehicles Are on the Way. Are Cities Ready? UCLA Downtown Los Angeles Forum on Transportation, Land Use and the Environment focuses on planning for the connected movement of people and goods

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By Stan Paul

Autonomous vehicles, once considered science fiction, are quickly becoming a reality.

With the technology and testing of driverless cars and trucks progressing rapidly, private industry is investing. At the same time, planners and policy makers are confronting another challenge: How will technology, policy, governmental legislation and industry practices come together to make the potential benefits of autonomous transportation a reality that is responsible, equitable and good for the environment?

To address these issues, two UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs research centers — the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) and the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies — used their April 13, 2007 transportation conference to focus on the implications of autonomous vehicles. The 10th UCLA Downtown Los Angeles Forum on Transportation, Land Use and the Environment brought together speakers representing the technology industry, along with planning researchers, and practitioners in the government and private sectors.

This year’s downtown forum, held at the California Endowment Los Angeles Conference Center was titled, “Steering Connected and Automated Mobility in the Right Direction.” Speakers and expert panels provided a look at the policy aspects of ridesharing and driverless transportation, from liability and equality viewpoints to greenhouse gas emissions and infrastructure. The panelists also discussed how the anticipated disruption of autonomous vehicles might play out locally, across California and around the nation.

Lauren Isaac, director of business initiatives for EasyMile, a high-tech mobility startup, discussed how connected and automated technologies may shape the future.

“What the data shows is that there needs to be either a costs savings or a time savings” to get people to participate, Isaac said. “There needs to be some benefit to a user to make that decision. The good thing is because of the way technology is evolving there’s great potential for both.”

Governments also play a part by providing HOV lanes and infrastructure for a faster ride, she said. “I think those are the kinds of levers that both technology providers and government can pull.”

Isaac said that freight companies will most likely be the No. 1 sector among the early adopters. “That industry is really interested in this,” she said, citing a shortage of drivers and huge cost savings that could come from moving goods this way.

“On the passenger side, I think without question we’re seeing the best response come from the younger generation,” she said, noting that there is also significant interest from the senior and disabled communities. “That being said, the challenge is how do you transfer people in wheelchairs or if they need additional help? People still rely on humans to get into the vehicles. So there’s still a lot of issues to work out around the para-transit piece,” Isaac said.

Chris Ganson, a senior planner from the California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, described some of the research he has seen. “The plus side here is — with a lot of this kind of thinking on automated vehicles — it’s really kind of this funny combination of research and futurism that’s going on,” Ganson said. “We’re extrapolating from our current experiences to try to figure out what things might be like in the future, and what we might need to do about them, but there is a lot of convergence in that thinking.”

Despite this, he said, “We have some tough things to do policywise and politically to receive these autonomous vehicles into our society.”

Ganson also said that it makes sense to be proactive while planning for the future. “While you’re repaving … or building a new transit system, adding the technology now saves 10 times the cost of putting it in later,” he said.

Maya Buenaventura, assistant policy analyst at the RAND Corp., provided a quick primer on common law, tort law and liability issues that would come with taking humans out of the driver’s seat, as well as product liability issues for manufacturers of autonomous cars and parts. There may be some uncertainty in the details initially, she explained, but many of the longstanding concepts of common law that apply to personal injury and property damage would also apply to autonomous vehicles.

“The outcome might not be optimal from a social welfare perspective right away,” she said. “Judges need to start thinking in the long term — what are the long-term costs and benefits — if this is something they’re just going to pick up as autonomous vehicles get introduced. But it is not clear that there are any better options.

“Another thing that we’ve come to realize is the identity of potential defendants isn’t going to be very different when autonomous vehicles are introduced,” Buenaventura added. “There’s still going to be, potentially, lawsuits against the driver, against manufacturers, against the component part manufacturers. And suits against these defendants already exist today.”

For Eric Shaw, director of the Washington, D.C., Office of Planning, “This question of why we want to be ‘smart’ in the first place is actually a question we haven’t answered yet. For us, it’s not just smart vehicles, it’s smart planning. We need to understand how to be smart.”

Shaw, a pre-Luskin 1998 UCLA graduate minored in what was then policy studies, said his city’s overarching commitment is to spatial and racial equity, which must be balanced with the goal of livability, new innovation and understanding urban efficiency.

“We are having crazy growth in our city,” Shaw said of Washington. “We’re a historic city, one of the oldest cities in the nation. We’re one of the most planned cities in the nation.”

With equity and access in mind, Shaw pointed out that the nation’s capital has a huge income disparity. He asked whether creating a system around pricing automatically creates a system that excludes the city’s low-income residents.

With this in mind, Shaw said that his department was looking at a number of scenarios for the city’s future.

“We’re not afraid to test; we’re not afraid to pilot. So we are looking at some of the best practices, looking at ideas of shared mobility and performance, and we’re not afraid to get it all right before we do that,” Shaw added. “We’re OK to test and take some risks, but with the same question right now — racial equity, spatial equity of land use of the built environment.”

Brian D. Taylor, professor of urban planning and director of both the ITS and the Lewis Center, pointed out the importance of addressing the issues covered in the forum.

“The presentations and discussion made clear that the rise of shared, connected and autonomous vehicles poses significant new challenges for transportation planners and policymakers, and in addition cast existing challenges into sharper relief,” Taylor said. “Addressing these challenges head-on today will help to ensure that we steer these new systems in the right direction.”

UCLA Luskin Urban Planning Students Help Solve Real-World Problems At annual springtime welcome day and networking event, MURP students showcase their research in capstone projects designed to help clients

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By Stan Paul

Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) students don’t have to wait until they graduate to identify and solve real-world problems. Working with clients and agencies, the students tackle issues in their respective fields long before receiving their diplomas from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

The capstone projects — yearlong research efforts — were on display April 6, 2017, at the department’s annual open house, during which prospective students are invited to meet current students, alumni, faculty and project clients. Each student project was represented by a poster that, to be effective, needed to easily convey information and be attention-grabbing.

“We have some students investigating the impact of a potential new bus line, looking at the role that accessory dwelling units might play in addressing the housing crisis,” said urban planning capstone instructor Brady Collins UP PhD ’16, citing a few examples of the nearly 40 displays. “One student is looking at the often overlooked, but important, role of women planners and planners of color in the history of Los Angeles. So there’s a really wide spectrum of different types of projects and different types of problems that the students are addressing.”

During the fall and winter quarters, Collins guides the second-year students from concept to completion. During the spring quarter, the students, who also work with urban planning faculty mentors, prepare their presentations for clients.

“It’s an intensive course,” Collins said. “We spend the first quarter looking at research design and research methods, how to write a literature review, how to conduct research. And we look at different ways of writing a policy report, or writing something that’s a little bit more focused.”

The projects can be based in Los Angeles or elsewhere, and may be with a planning firm, public agency or a nonprofit group. “UCLA has a reputation in the City of Los Angeles, so a number of organizations actually put their name in the hat and say: ‘We want a student from the master’s program to work with us. This is the problem or the research need that we have. And if there’s a student in the group that meets that, we would love to have them on board.’”

The reports and accompanying posters may also serve as a pathway to a job, Collins said, demonstrating to potential employers that “this is the knowledge and expertise that I have — this is what I am capable of doing as a planner.”

Julie Heinrich, associated director of admissions and recruitment in the Department of Urban Planning, greets a prospective student at Welcome Day. Photo by Les DunseithJulie Heinrich, associate director of admissions and recruitment in the Department of Social Welfare, welcomes a prospective student. Photo by Les Dunseith
Julie Heinrich, associated director of admissions and recruitment in the Department of Urban Planning, greets a prospective student at Welcome Day. Photo by Les Dunseith
Julie Heinrich, associated director of admissions and recruitment in the Department of Urban Planning, greets a prospective student at Welcome Day. Photo by Les Dunseith
Urban Planning student XXX XXX discusses his capstone projet on busways. Photo by George Foulsham
Urban Planning student XXX XXX discusses his capstone projet on busways. Photo by George Foulsham

Alumnus David De Rosa MURP ’10, who works as a senior urban and transportation planner in Los Angeles, served as an evaluator for the projects. De Rosa said he was impressed by the quality of the posters, which seem to improve each year. “It’s an important skill in urban planning to communicate a complex issue in a simple way to be understood,” he said.

One example was “Planes, Trains, and Storm Drains: The Effects of Transportation Infrastructure on Water Runoff in Los Angeles County,” a project examining the region’s many transportation modes. Student Aviv Kleinman, whose client is the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), looked at ways the county can recapture storm water, and at policies that can be more sustainable.

“Water is precious,” Kleinman said. “Even though we had a really wet year this year we’re certainly going to be facing drought in the future. We already know what that’s like and it’s really important to recharge the ground water.”

Caitlin Dawson’s project, “Turning the Blue Line Green: Implementing Green Places along Metro’s Blue Line,” is designed to help Los Angeles County Metro implement sustainable projects along pathways. Dawson wants to improve the experience for people on bikes and on foot who commute to transit centers. Solving this so-called “first last mile” problem will involve partnerships with communities, she said.

“Basically, what I’ve been looking at is how they can implement them through ‘tactical urbanism,’” Dawson said. “That’s a way to implement projects that are short term, and kind of try out strategies to see if it’s a long-term thing a community might want to do. It’s coordinating with a lot of community stakeholders.”

Among the faculty touring the displays was Vinit Mukjiha, chair of urban planning.

“I enjoyed seeing how our students were able to address real-world challenges and practical planning problems through sophisticated research projects,” said Mukhija, who also served as a student project adviser. “Their work was a good representation of both the range of challenges planners face and the wide array of research methods available to help address them.”

He also noted the interaction of current and future students.

“It was also nice to see the exchange of ideas between graduating second-year students, first-year students who are getting ready to think about their capstone projects, and admitted students who are raring to start their professional studies,” Mukhija said.

In other welcome day events, the UCLA Luskin’s Department of Social Welfare hosted newly admitted students at UCLA’s Ackerman Grand Ballroom on the same day. And the Department of Public Policy welcomed its admitted students on Monday, April 10, 2017, with a full slate of activities.

Prospective students for all three departments had the opportunity to tour the UCLA campus and hear from current students about the Luskin experience. They also were offered the opportunity to sit in on alumni panels and learn about student groups and resources, from financial aid to alumni services.

UCLA Researchers Seek Juvenile Justice Alternatives for Children Under 12 UC study indicates that a minimum-age standard is needed to protect California children from prosecution in the juvenile court system

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By Stan Paul

Dr. Elizabeth Barnert, left, and Laura Abrams. Photo by George Foulsham

Although Laura Abrams and Dr. Elizabeth Barnert come from opposite ends of the UCLA campus, their work in their respective academic professions meets at the intersection of health and juvenile justice.

A recent University of California study led by Abrams, professor of social welfare in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and Barnert, an assistant professor of pediatrics in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, offers a powerful rationale for shielding children 11 years old and younger from prosecution and incarceration in the state’s juvenile justice system.

“Children in the juvenile justice system literally meet the definition of children with special health care needs,” said Barnert, who worked with Abrams as members of a team affiliated with the University of California Criminal Justice and Health Consortium. Prior to their study, which was recently published in International Journal of Prisoner Health, the issue in California was not on anyone’s radar, they said.

“Kids in conflict with the law are kids that typically have unmet health needs. We see a lot of undiagnosed depression, ADHD and learning disabilities — or absentee parents who can’t support their children due to working three jobs, deportation, imprisonment or substance abuse,” Barnert said. “When we prosecute these children or lock them away, we’re putting them in a system that traumatizes them further and often makes their problems worse.”

The UCLA study brought together UC experts from social welfare, medicine, psychology and psychiatry, law and criminology, as well as community partners from organizations such as the Children’s Defense Fund-California and the National Center for Youth Law.

“Our findings provide a rationale for why California should have a minimum age for entering the juvenile justice system and why children 11 and younger should be excluded,” Barnert said. “The study recommendations are based on international human rights standards, guidelines from organizations like the American Academy of Pediatricians, and medical evidence that children’s brains do not fully mature until their mid-20s.”

Added Abrams: “The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child has established a standard on children in conflict with the law. The convention states that every country should have a minimum age of criminal responsibility, or what we refer to as a minimum age of juvenile justice jurisdiction. The United States does not have this type of law at the federal level, however, so it is up to the states to determine.”

Abrams pointed out that protections for minors already built into current state law are based on the capacity or the intent to commit a crime, as well as the competency to stand trial. California’s 58 counties, however, set many of their own juvenile probation standards. Therefore, “there’s no way to insure, without a minimum-age law, that state laws around capacity and competency are being implemented fairly and without geographic or racial disparities. There is no statewide oversight of these mechanisms for protecting children,” Abrams said.

Findings and recommendations from the UC study and related policy briefs prepared by the researchers include:

  • Children should be held less culpable under criminal law, given their expected developmental immaturity, as repeatedly recognized in recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
  • Children have a diminished capacity to make intentional decisions regarding participation in crimes or to understand that an act was morally wrong.
  • Children have less developed abilities to understand court proceedings and meaningfully participate, emotionally or cognitively, in working with attorneys to wage their own defense.

California currently has no law that specifies a minimum age for prosecuting and imprisoning minors. But a new state senate bill, SB 439, which incorporates the research and recommendations in the UC study, would change that by amending sections 601 and 602 of the California Welfare and Institutions Code related to juvenile court jurisdiction. In particular, the bill would substitute current references to “any person under 18 years of age” with language specifying individuals “ages 12 to 18.”

In its first hearing on April 4, the senate’s committee on public safety passed the bill, which was then referred to the senate appropriations committee, the next step in the legislative process. The bill is part of a package of criminal justice reform bills put forth by the legislators in March.

Proposed amendments and revisions to SB 439 can be found online.