Past Events

CLEAR | Sahar Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom

4/10/2023
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM
401 E. Peltason Drive, Suite 1000, Irvine, CA 92697-8000

The UCI Center on Law, Equality and Race (CLEAR) welcomes Professor Sahar Aziz to discuss The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom (UC Press, 2021). Comments by Professors Mario Barnes and Rachel Moran. Discussion moderated by Professor Dana Lee.

Publisher's Description
Why does a country with religious liberty enmeshed in its legal and social structures produce such overt prejudice and discrimination against Muslims? Sahar Aziz’s groundbreaking book demonstrates how race and religion intersect to create what she calls the Racial Muslim. Comparing discrimination against immigrant Muslims with the prejudicial treatment of Jews, Catholics, Mormons, and African American Muslims during the twentieth century, Aziz explores the gap between America’s aspiration for and fulfillment of religious freedom. With America’s demographics rapidly changing from a majority white Protestant nation to a multiracial, multireligious society, this book is an in dispensable read for understanding how our past continues to shape our present—to the detriment of our nation’s future.

About the Author
Sahar Aziz is a Professor of Law and Chancellor's Social Justice Scholar at Rutgers Law School. Her scholarship examines the intersection of national security, race, religion, and civil rights with a focus on the adverse impact of national security laws and policies on racial, religious, and ethnic minorities. Professor Aziz is a recipient of the Derrick A. Bell Award from the Association of American Law Schools and was named a Middle Eastern and North African American National Security and Foreign Policy Next Generation Leader by New America in 2020 and a Soros Equality Fellow in 2021.

CLEAR Perspectives | Devon Carbado, Unreasonable: Black Lives, Police Power, and the Fourth Amendment

2/23/2023
5:30:00 PM to 7:00:00 PM
401 E. Peltason Drive, Suite 1000, Irvine, CA 92697-8000

The UCI Center on Law, Equality, and Race (CLEAR) hosts a Perspectives reading group discussion of Devon Carbado's book, Unreasonable: Black Lives, Police Power, and the Fourth Amendment (The New Press, 2022).

Discussion will focus on the Introduction and Chapters 2 & 5.

Publisher's Description:

“The Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Fourth Amendment over the past five decades has allocated enormous power to police officers—the power to surveil, the power to racially profile, the power to stop-and-frisk, and the power to kill.” —Devon W. Carbado, from Unreasonable

The summer of 2020 will be remembered as an unprecedented, watershed moment in the struggle for racial equality. Published on the second anniversary of the global protests over the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Unreasonable is a groundbreaking investigation of the role that the law—and the U.S. Constitution—play in the epidemic of police violence against Black people.

In this crucially timely book, celebrated legal scholar Devon W. Carbado explains how the Fourth Amendment became ground zero for regulating police conduct—more important than Miranda warnings, the right to counsel, equal protection and due process. Fourth Amendment law determines when and how the police can make arrests, and it determines the precarious line between stopping Black people and killing Black people.

A leading light in the critical race studies movement, Carbado looks at how that text, in the last four decades, has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to protect police officers, not African Americans; how it sanctions search and seizure as well as profiling; and how it has become, ultimately, an amendment of life and death.

Accessible, radical, and essential reading, Unreasonable sheds light on a rarely understood dimension of today’s most pressing issue.

To request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please email centers@law.uci.edu.

CLEAR & CLS | Matthew Clair - Privilege and Punishment Book Talk

4/4/2022
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM
401 E. Peltason Drive, Suite 1000, Irvine, CA 92697-8000

The UCI Law Center on Law, Equality, and Race and UCI Department of Criminology, Law & Society welcome Matthew Clair to discuss his book, Privilege and Punishment: How Race and Class Matter in Criminal Court (Princeton University Press, 2020).

About the Book

The number of Americans arrested, brought to court, and incarcerated has skyrocketed in recent decades. Criminal defendants come from all races and economic walks of life, but they experience punishment in vastly different ways. Privilege and Punishment examines how racial and class inequalities are embedded in the attorney-client relationship, providing a devastating portrait of inequality and injustice within and beyond the criminal courts.

Matthew Clair conducted extensive fieldwork in the Boston court system, attending criminal hearings and interviewing defendants, lawyers, judges, police officers, and probation officers. In this eye-opening book, he uncovers how privilege and inequality play out in criminal court interactions. When disadvantaged defendants try to learn their legal rights and advocate for themselves, lawyers and judges often silence, coerce, and punish them. Privileged defendants, who are more likely to trust their defense attorneys, delegate authority to their lawyers, defer to judges, and are rewarded for their compliance. Clair shows how attempts to exercise legal rights often backfire on the poor and on working-class people of color, and how effective legal representation alone is no guarantee of justice.

Privilege and Punishment draws needed attention to the injustices that are perpetuated by the attorney-client relationship in today’s criminal courts, and describes the reforms needed to correct them.

About the Author

Dr. Matthew Clair is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and (by courtesy) the Law School at Stanford University. His scholarship broadly examines how cultural meanings and interactions reflect, reproduce, and challenge various dimensions of social inequality, legal violence, and injustice.

This event will be hosted in-person at UCI Law with a live stream available on Zoom for remote participation. Zoom details will be sent upon registration.

CLEAR | Martin Luther King Jr. Day Panel Discussion: What Would Reparations Look Like?

1/14/2022
1:15:00 PM to 2:15:00 PM

Discussions of historical racial wrongs in the United States often raise questions about what measures might provide accountability for those wrongs. UCI Law marks the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday by bringing together three of its faculty members—renowned scholars, activists and advocates for racial justice—to address the question of what reparations would look like in a society committed to racial equality.

Speakers include:
Mehrsa Baradaran, Professor of Law
Jamelia Morgan, Assistant Professor of Law
Bob Solomon, Distinguished Clinical Professor of Law

Future of Latinos Initiative | Defining the Future of UCI as a Hispanic-Serving Institution

11/18/2021
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM

Defining the Future of UCI as a Hispanic-Serving Institution will explore the campus’s efforts to establish UCI's identity as a Hispanic-Serving Institution. As of 2021, there are 16 R1 Hispanic-Serving Institutions in the United States, with UCI among them. Additionally, of these R1 Hispanic-Serving Institutions, there are currently four (including UCI) that are also members of the Association of American Universities. Therefore, the campus has an opportunity to play a key leadership role in this area. This event will feature Assistant Vice Chancellor Sandra Campero as she discusses her work in promoting the newly launched UCI OC Alliance for a Latinx Thriving University as part of her responsibilities as Assistant Vice Chancellor for Advancement Operations. Additionally, the event will feature Dr. Joseph Morales’ work in the Office of Inclusive Excellence as Associate Director for Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships. Dr. Morales will share the Office’s goals for UCI as a Hispanic-Serving Institution, the Office’s achievements so far, and the Office’s plans for the future. Both Assistant Vice Chancellor Campero and Dr. Morales will offer ideas on how faculty, students, staff, alumni, and interested community members can be of assistance.

Sandra Campero is Assistant Vice Chancellor for Advancement Operations at the University of California, Irvine. She oversees the prospect development and donor relations units to support campus-wide fundraising efforts. As part of her role as Assistant Vice Chancellor, she promotes the UCI OC Alliance for a Latinx Thriving University. Sandra serves as a Trustee for the APRA Foundation, and faculty for CASE’s Summer Institute in Advancement Services. Additionally, she served on the board of directors of the Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement (APRA) and was the board liaison for the Ethics, Awards, and Governance Committees respectively. She is a past board member of the California Advancement Researchers Association (CARA) where she was chair of the Volunteer Committee and received the CARA Service Award, the highest honor bestowed by the organization. She is an active member of APRA, CARA and CASE and currently serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Education Advancement and Marketing. She is a member of the Association of Donor Relations Professionals (ADRP) and Association of Advancement Services Professionals (AASP).

Dr. Joseph Morales serves as Associate Director for Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships in the University of California, Irvine’s Office of Inclusive Excellence. Dr. Morales helps to build campus capacity to become a national leader and global model of inclusive excellence. Among his duties include monitoring and advancing student success, deepening and expanding our relations with other Minority Serving Institutions, and advocating for inclusive excellence locally, regionally and nationally. Dr. Morales is a former UCI Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow. Informed by his own experience as a first generation and low-income student, he was also a founding faculty member of the CSULB-LBUSD Ethnic Studies Initiative. Starting his educational path at a California community college, Dr. Morales later earned a bachelor’s degree at University of California, Santa Barbara, a master’s degree from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from University of California, Berkeley.

NOTE: This event is being recorded for archival, educational, and related promotional purposes. All audience members agree to the possibility of appearing on these recordings by virtue of attending the event or participating in the event. Since this is a webinar, your image will not appear during the session.

Caged: Disability, Incarceration and the Destruction of Life Chances

8/13/2021
12:00:00 PM to 1:30:00 PM

Join us for this virtual dialogue about disability, race, incarceration and policing in the United States

About this event

Featuring Liat Ben-Moshe, Nirmala Erevelles, and Leroy Moore, this event draws from Disability Justice and Critical Race Theory movements to confront and delineate the harms of mass incarceration and institutionalization.

This event is hosted by Kaaryn Gustafson.

Sponsored by Repair, the UCLA Disability Studies Program, and the Center on Law, Equality & Race (CLEAR) at the University of California, Irvine School of Law.

Free and open to the public. Closed-captioned. Other questions or requests related to disability access? Contact us: repair.inquiries@gmail.com

Image description: A sculpture by the artist Lorraine Bonner, featuring an armless person from the waist up. The material is dark/black clay. The facial expression of the figure is somber, with a wrinkled brow. The torso's rib cage is open, showing white rocks inside the figure's chest. The sculpture is titled "Memories".

Caged: Disability, Incarceration and the Destruction of Life Chances image

Land, Resistance, & Law in Occupied Palestine

6/2/2021
5:00:00 PM to 6:15:00 PM

A Conversation with Jamil Dakwar and Tallie Ben-Daniel

Please join us for a conversation on Palestine, settler colonialism, and the law with Jamil Dakwar and Tallie Ben-Daniel, moderated by Professor Kaaryn Gustafson.

Jamil Dakwar
A human rights lawyer and chair of Adalah Justice Project board. Born and raised in Haifa, he was one of the founding lawyers of Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. He teaches human rights at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Hunter College and Bard College.

Tallie Ben-Daniel
Director of Special Projects at Jewish Voice for Peace. She received her PhD from UC Davis in Cultural Studies, and is currently working on her book manuscript, Gay Capital: San Francisco, Tel-Aviv and the Politics of Settler-Colonialism.

Professor Kaaryn Gustafson
Director of the Center on Law, Equality and Race (CLEAR) at the University of California, Irvine School of Law.

The following UCI School of Law student organizations co-sponsored this event:
Asian Pacific American Law Students
Latinx Law Student Association
Middle Eastern South Asian Law Students Association
Muslim Law Students Association
National Lawyers Guild
Outlaw
Women's Law Society

Reimagining the Latinx Experience in America: Edward Telles, Durable Ethnicity

4/15/2021
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM

Mexican Americans are unique in the panoply of American ethno-racial groups in that they are the descendants of the largest and longest lasting immigration stream in US history. Today, there are approximately 24 million Americans of Mexican descent living in the United States, many of whose families have been in the US for several generations. In Durable Ethnicity, Edward Telles and Christina A. Sue examine the meanings behind being both American and ethnically Mexican for contemporary Mexican Americans. Rooted in a large-scale longitudinal and representative survey of Mexican Americans living in San Antonio and Los Angeles across 35 years, Telles and Sue draw on 70 in-depth interviews and over 1,500 surveys to examine how Mexicans Americans construct their identities and attitudes related to ethnicity, nationality, language, and immigration. In doing so, they highlight the primacy of their American identities and variation in their ethnic identities, showing that their experiences range on a continuum from symbolic to consequential ethnicity, even into the fourth generation. Durable Ethnicity offers a comprehensive exploration into how, when, and why ethnicity matters for multiple generations of Mexican Americans, arguing that their experiences are influenced by an ethnic core, a set of structural and institutional forces that promote and sustain ethnicity.

Edward Telles is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. His most recent book is Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race and Color in Latin America, based on the multinational and multidisciplinary Project on Ethnicity and Race in Latin America (PERLA), which he directed. He also wrote Race in Another America, 2004, which won the Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award from the American Sociological Association, the Otis Dudley Duncan Award for the best book in Social Demography and several other awards; Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation, and Race, 2008 with Ortiz, also won the Duncan Award, as well as the Best Book Award from the Pacific Sociological Association.

Christina A. Sue is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her research is in the areas of comparative race/ethnicity, race mixture/multiracialism, Latino/a integration, immigration, and gender, with a regional focus on Latin America and the United States. In 2013 she published Land of the Cosmic Race: Race Mixture, Racism, and Blackness in Mexico (Oxford University Press) which examines how national ideologies in Mexico influence Mexicans' understandings of racism, race mixture, and blackness.

Reimagining the Latinx Experience in America: Ian Haney López, Merge Left

4/8/2021
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM

Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America

In 2014, Ian Haney López in Dog Whistle Politics named and explained the coded racial appeals exploited by right-wing politicians over the last half century—and thereby anticipated the 2016 presidential election. Now the country is heading into what will surely be one of the most consequential elections ever, with the Right gearing up to exploit racial fear-mongering to divide and distract, and the Left splintered over the next step forward. Some want to focus on racial justice head-on; others insist that a race-silent focus on class avoids alienating white voters.

Can either approach—race-forward or colorblind—build the progressive supermajorities necessary to break political gridlock and fundamentally change the country’s direction?

For the past two years, Haney López has been collaborating with a research team of union activists, racial justice leaders, communications specialists, and pollsters. Based on conversations, interviews, and surveys with thousands of people all over the country, the team found a way forward.

By merging the fights for racial justice and for shared economic prosperity, they were able to build greater enthusiasm for both goals—and for the cross-racial solidarity needed to win elections.
What does this mean? It means that neutralizing the Right’s political strategy of racial division is possible, today. And that’s the key to everything progressives want to achieve.

A work of deep research, nuanced argument, and urgent insight, Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America is an indispensable tool for the upcoming political season and in the larger fight to build racial justice and shared economic prosperity for all of us.

Ian Haney López is a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches in the areas of race and constitutional law. Haney López is the author of Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America (The New Press) and Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class, plus two other books and two anthologies. He co-founded the Race-Class Narrative Project, and also co-chaired the AFL-CIO’s Advisory Council on Racial and Economic Justice. He holds an endowed chair as the Earl Warren Professor of Public Law at UC Berkeley and lives in Richmond, California.

Mutual Aid, Organizing, and the Law

3/25/2021
5:30:00 PM to 7:00:00 PM

Come hear Dean Spade, Sandra de Anda, and Carlos Perea in conversation with UCI Law Professor Annie Lai on what it means to incorporate mutual aid and organizing into their legal and organizing work. Please register here.

Reimagining the Latinx Experience in America: Rocio Rosales, Fruteros

2/25/2021
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM

Fruteros: Street Vending, Illegality, and Ethnic Community in Los Angeles examines the social worlds of young Latino street vendors as they navigate the complexities of local and federal laws prohibiting both their presence and their work on street corners. Known as fruteros, they sell fruit salads out of pushcarts throughout Los Angeles and are part of the urban landscape.

Drawing on six years of fieldwork, Rocío Rosales offers a compelling portrait of their day-to-day struggles. In the process, she examines how their paisano (hometown compatriot) social networks both help and exploit them. Much of the work on newly arrived Latino immigrants focuses on the ways in which their social networks allow them to survive. Rosales argues that this understanding of ethnic community simplifies the complicated ways in which social networks and social capital work. Fruteros sheds light on those complexities and offers the concept of the “ethnic cage” to explain both the promise and pain of community.

Rocío Rosales< /a> is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine.

Reimagining the Latinx Experience in America: Michael Olivas,� Perchance to DREAM: A Legal and Political History of the DREAM Act and DACA

1/28/2021
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM

The first comprehensive history of the DREAM Act and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)

In 1982, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Plyler v. Doe that undocumented children had the right to attend public schools without charge or impediment, regardless of their immigration status. The ruling raised a question: what if undocumented students, after graduating from the public school system, wanted to attend college?

Perchance to DREAM is the first comprehensive history of the DREAM Act, which made its initial congressional appearance in 2001, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the discretionary program established by President Obama in 2012 out of Congressional failure to enact comprehensive immigration reform. Michael A. Olivas relates the history of the DREAM Act and DACA over the course of two decades.

With the Trump Administration challenging the legality of DACA and pursuing its elimination in 2017, the fate of DACA is uncertain. Perchance to DREAM follows the political participation of DREAMers, who have been taken hostage as pawns in a cruel game as the White House continues to advocate anti-immigrant policies. Perchance to DREAM brings to light the many twists and turns that the legislation has taken, suggests why it has not gained the required traction, and offers hopeful pathways that could turn this darkness to dawn.

Michael A. Olivas is William B. Bates Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of Houston Law Center and Director of the Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance at UH. His books include Colored Men And Hombres Aquí: Hernandez v. Texas and the Emergence of Mexican American Lawyering; The Law And Higher Education: Cases And Materials on Colleges in Court Third Edition; and Education Law Stories (with Ronna Greff Schneider).

The 1619 Project: Financial Legacies: Slavery and the History of Banking

10/22/2020
5:00:00 PM to 6:30:00 PM

Moderator:

• Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Princeton)

Speakers:

• Bill Maurer (Social Sciences)
• Peter Hudson (UCLA)
• Mehrsa Baradaran (UCI Law)

This event is 60 minutes and will include a Q&A session. For those who are interested, please stay for a bonus 30 minute facilitated discussion.

Discussion Facilitators:

• Tonya Bradford (Business)
• Mrinalini Tankha (Portland State University)

Suggested Podcast/Readings:

• Matthew Desmond, “If you want to understand the brutally of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation,” The 1619 Project And Photo essay by Dannielle Bowman; text by Anne C. Bailey
• Mehrsa Baradaran, “Mortgaging the Future,” p. 32; “Good as Gold,” p. 35; and “Fabric of Modernity,” p. 36
• Tiya Miles, “How Slavery Made Wall Street,” p. 40
• Trymaine Lee, “A vast wealth gap, driven by segregation, redlining, evictions and exclusion, separates black and white America,” The 1619 Project
• 1619 Podcast 2: The Economy that Slavery Built

To read the 1619 Project, see: (www.pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/full_issue_of_the_1619_project.pdf) To access the podcasts, see: (https://guides.lib.uci.edu/oceanproject)
To participate in The 1619 Project in 2020: Student Showcase (one minute reflection videos eligible for gift card drawings), see: bit.ly/1619Showcase

The 1619 Project in 2020
#UCI1619Project

The 1619 Project, published by the New York Times, retells the history of the U.S. by foregrounding the arrival 401 years ago of enslaved Africans to Virginia. Through a series of essays, photos, and podcasts, the 1619 Project charts the impact of slavery on the country’s founding principles, economy, health care system, racial segregation of neighborhoods and schools, popular music and visual representations. Conversations around the 1619 project have served as a flashpoint for intensive ideological debates about its content and impact. It has been both widely lauded and subjected to critiques from academics, journalists, pundits and policymakers who challenge its accuracy and its interpretation of history. Conservative politicians even seek to defund schools that teach the project. What is the power of the 1619 Project to reframe our understanding of U.S. history and our contemporary society? How might we go beyond the 1619 Project to develop an even fuller understanding of the centrality of slavery and race in the U.S. and in the broader Atlantic world? Join us for month plus exploration of The 1619 Project, which culminates in the visit of Nikole Hannah- Jones, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of the project.

The 1619 Project series is presented by UCI Humanities Center and is co-sponsored by: UCI Illuminations: The Chancellor’s Arts & Culture Initiative, UCI Black Thriving Initiative, School of Humanities, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, School of Education, School of Law, School of Social Ecology, School of Social Sciences, UCI Libraries, Academic English, Composition Program, Center for Latin American Studies, Center on Law, Equality, and Race, Center for Medical Humanities, International Center for Writing and Translation, Literary Journalism and Center for Storytelling, Office of Inclusive Excellence, Student Affairs, Staff Assembly, AAPI Womxn in Leadership and Academic and Professional Women of UCI.

CLEAR Perspectives | The Fire Next Time

10/20/2020
5:45:00 PM to 7:15:00 PM

This session will discuss James Baldwin's book, The Fire Next Time (Dial Press, 1963).

Publisher's introduction:
A national bestseller when it first appeared in 1963, The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation, gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement—and still lights the way to understanding race in America today.

At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin’s early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document from the iconic author of If Beale Street Could Talk and Go Tell It on the Mountain. It consists of two “letters,” written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. Described by The New York Times Book Review as “sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle…all presented in searing, brilliant prose,” The Fire Next Time stands as a classic of literature.

Discussion facilitated by Mehrsa Baradaran, Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, UCI School of Law

Members of the UCI community have free access to the book through the library here. Zoom information will be sent to those who register.

The 1619 Project: The Black Liberation Movement and Radical Community Education

10/19/2020
4:00:00 PM to 5:30:00 PM

Moderator: Krystal Tribbett (UCI Libraries)

Speakers:

• Ericka Huggins (Facilitator of Conversations on Racial Equity, Leader of the Black Panthers, Human Rights Activist and Poet)
• Angela LeBlanc- Ernest (Independent Scholar and Filmmaker; Director: The Oakland Community School Documentary Project; Co-Founder: The Intersectional Black Panther Party History Project)
• Damien Sojoyner (Anthropology)
• Roderic Crooks (Informatics)

This event is 60 minutes and will include a Q&A session. For those who are interested, please stay for a bonus 30 minute facilitated discussion.

Discussion Facilitators:

• Jessica Gonzalez (Logic and Philosophy of Science)
• Toni Hays (English)
• Bryan Murray (Linguistic Studies, Education)

The 1619 Project: Intersecting Realities: Health, Race, and the Ongoing Legacies of Slavery and Jim Crow

10/15/2020
5:00:00 PM to 6:30:00 PM

Moderator: Gwendolyn R. Majette (Cleveland-Marshall College of Law)

Speakers:

• Sabrina Strings (Sociology)
• Candice Taylor Lucas (Health Sciences)
• Michele Goodwin (Law)
This event is 60 minutes and will include a Q&A session. For those who are interested, please stay for a bonus 30 minute facilitated discussion.

Discussion Facilitators:

• Srimayee Basu (English)
• Sherine Hamdy (Anthropology)

Suggested Podcast/Readings:

The 1619 podcast episode 4: How the Bad Blood Started
Janeen Interlandi, “Why doesn’t the United States have universal health care? The answer has everything to do with race,” pp. 44-45
Linda Villarosa, “Myths about physical racial differences were used to justify slavery - and are still believed by doctors today," pp. 56-57
Khalil Gibran Muhammad, “The sugar that saturates the American diet has a barbaric gustiest as the ‘white gold’ that fuels slavery," pp. 70-77

The 1619 Project in 2020
#UCI1619Project

The 1619 Project: Designing the Narrative with Taylor Shaw and Jon Key

10/13/2020
4:00:00 PM to 5:30:00 PM

This event brings together two path-forging creatives for a conversation about race and representation in the current moment. Taylor Shaw is a writer, producer and founder of Black Women Animate, a studio dedicated to cultivating talented women of color and other underrepresented people in the entertainment industry. Jon Key is an illustrator, designer and fine artist whose work across different media addresses themes including Southerness, Blackness, Queerness and Family. He also contributed illustrations to the original 1619 Project publication. After Taylor and Jon introduce us to the work they do, the heart of the event will be a lively conversation about passion, identity and experience in creative industries, with a focus on how Taylor and Jon use their voices to contribute to the narratives they’re helping to tell. We will welcome questions from the audience and provide a syllabus of resources related to the event.

Speakers:

• Jon Key, Illustrator for 1619 Project
• Taylor K. Shaw, Founder of Black Women Animate

In conversation with

• Keith Murphy (Anthropology)
• Ella Turenne (Visual Studies)

Respondent and Discussion Facilitator:

• Desha Dauchan (Film and Media Studies)

Reimagining the Latinx Experience in America: Professor Laura Enriquez on Of Love and Papers: How Immigration Policy Affects Romance and Family

10/12/2020
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM

Of Love and Papers explores how immigration policies are fundamentally reshaping Latino families. Drawing on two waves of interviews with undocumented young adults, Dr. Laura Enriquez investigates how immigration status creeps into the most personal aspects of everyday life, intersecting with gender to constrain family formation. The imprint of illegality remains, even upon obtaining DACA or permanent residency.

Interweaving the perspectives of US citizen romantic partners and children, Enriquez illustrates the multigenerational punishment that limits the upward mobility of Latino families. Of Love and Papers sparks an intimate understanding of contemporary US immigration policies and their enduring consequences for immigrant families.

“By highlighting the ways U.S. immigration policies shape the experiences of romantic love, intimacy and family formation, Enriquez’s meticulous research calls attention to the enduring injurious effects on undocumented and DACAmented young adults, and on their citizen spouses and children. An innovative and sobering account of the far-reaching consequences of our punishing immigration policies. Timely and compelling.”—Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Florence Everline Professor of Sociology, University of Southern California

Laura Enriquez is Associate Professor in the Chicano/Latino Studies Department at the University of California, Irvine. She has researched, presented, and published on a range of issues related to the educational, economic, political, and social experiences of undocumented young adults who immigrated to the United States as children. Putting her research into practice, she works directly with colleges and community organizations to help them better serve undocumented immigrants. Dr. Enriquez is faculty-in-residence at the UCI Dream Center, faculty chair of UCI’s Committee for Equity and Inclusion of Undocumented Students and serves as the faculty advisor for UCI’s Marco A. Firebaugh House, an on-campus housing community for undocumented students and allies.

From Prop 209 to Prop 16: Historical, Legal and Activist Perspectives on Affirmative Action

10/7/2020
12:00:00 PM to 1:30:00 PM

Californians have endured a statewide ban on race- and gender- based affirmative action policies since the passage of Proposition 209, which is widely recognized for its devastating impact on advancing racial justice in labor and education. The 2019 court case against Harvard University alleging that affirmative action policies discriminate against Asian-Americans amplifies the need for improved public understanding of affirmative action policies as legal remedies to recognize and dismantle racial harm. In November, Proposition 16 would restore affirmative action in CA. Join us for this panel discussing the legacies of Proposition 209 and the promise of Proposition 16.

Moderated by Professor Vinay Harpalani, the event features:

•Dr. César A. Cruz, author of Revenge of the Illegal Alien, and participant in the 1995 student hunger strike against Proposition 209
• Professor Cheryl I. Harris, Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Professor in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, UCLA School of Law
•Professor Jerry Kang, Distinguished Professor of Law and Asian American Studies, and Founding Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, UCLA School of Law
•Eva Paterson, President and Founder of Equal Justice Society, and Yes on 16 Campaign Chairperson
•Thomas A. Saenz, President and General Counsel of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and Yes on 16 Campaign Chairperson.

Sponsored by Asian American Bar Association of Northern California; California Lawyers Association; Charles Houston Bar Association; Chinese for Affirmative Action; UCI Law Center on Law, Equality and Race; Center for Racial and Economic Justice at UC Hastings Law; Critical Race Studies at UCLA School of Law; Dolan Law Firm; Equal Justice Society; Filipino Bar Association of Northern California; Mexican- American Legal Defense & Educational Fund; Repair; and UC Berkeley’s Asian American Studies program.

For questions regarding disability access, please contact crs@law.ucla.edu.

Reimagining the Latinx Experience in America: Professor María Rendón on Stagnant Dreamers: How the Inner City Shapes the Integration of Second-Generation Latinos

9/21/2020
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM

A quarter of young adults in the U.S. today are the children of immigrants, and Latinos are the largest minority group. In Stagnant Dreamers, sociologist and social policy expert María Rendón follows 42 young men from two high-poverty Los Angeles neighborhoods as they transition into adulthood. Based on in- depth interviews and ethnographic observations with them and their immigrant parents, Stagnant Dreamers describes the challenges they face coming of age in the inner city and accessing higher education and good jobs and demonstrates how family-based social ties and community institutions can serve as buffers against neighborhood violence, chronic poverty, incarceration, and other negative outcomes.

Rendón demonstrates the importance of social supports in helping second-generation immigrant youth succeed. To further the integration of second-generation Latinos, she suggests investing in community organizations, combatting criminalization of Latino youth, and fully integrating them into higher education institutions. Stagnant Dreamers presents a realistic yet hopeful account of how the Latino second generation is attempting to realize its vision of the American dream.

Stagnant Dreamers has received several awards by the American Sociological Association, including the Robert E. Park Award, (Community and Urban Sociology section); Distinguished Contribution to Research Book Award (Latina/o Sociology) and Honorable Mention for the Thomas and Znaniecki Best Book Award (International Migration).

María Rendón is Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy at the University of California, Irvine. As an urban scholar, Dr. Rendón has made important contributions to understand how residential segregation and poverty concentration affects Latino immigrants and their children. This includes examining the role of urban violence, criminalization and racialization processes in the lives of Latinos, as well as how social networks and institutions alleviate or aggravate the consequences of American spatial inequalities.

Reimagining the Latinx Experience in America: Professor Laura Gómez on Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism

9/14/2020
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM

A timely and groundbreaking argument that all Americans must grapple with Latinos’ dynamic racial identity—because it impacts everything we think we know about race in America.

Latinos have long influenced everything from electoral politics to popular culture‚ yet many people instinctively regard them as recent immigrants rather than a longstanding racial group. In Inventing Latinos‚ Laura Gómez‚ a leading expert on race‚ law‚ and society‚ illuminates the fascinating race-making‚ unmaking‚ and re-making of Latino identity that has spanned centuries‚ leaving a permanent imprint on how race operates in the United States today.

Pulling back the lens as the country approaches an unprecedented demographic shift (Latinos will comprise a third of the American population in a matter of decades)‚ Gómez also reveals the nefarious roles the United States has played in Latin America—from military interventions and economic exploitation to political interference—that‚ taken together‚ have destabilized national economies to send migrants northward over the course of more than a century. It’s no coincidence that the vast majority of Latinos migrate from the places most impacted by this nation’s dirty deeds‚ leading Gómez to a bold call for reparations.

In this audacious effort to reframe the often-confused and misrepresented discourse over the Latinx generation‚ Gómez provides essential context for today’s most pressing political and public debates—representation‚ voice‚ interpretation‚ and power—giving all of us a brilliant framework to engage cultural controversies‚ elections‚ current events‚ and more.

Laura Gómez is Professor of Law and Faculty Director of UCLA Law’s Critical Race Studies (CRS) Program, the first specialized program of study on race and law for law students in the nation. In 2000, Professor Gómez founded CRS and became the second Latina tenured at a top-20 U.S. law school. She holds joint appointments in UCLA’s Sociology Department and the Department of Chicana & Chicano Studies and Central American Studies. Her scholarship focuses on the intersection of law, race, politics, and inequality both historically and today. She has published numerous articles, book chapters, op-ed commentaries, and authored several books, including her latest, Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism published in 2020 by The New Press.

'Yonder they do not love your flesh': Mourning, Anti-Blackness, and Claiming All of Us

6/3/2020
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM

The Center on Law, Equality and Race (CLEAR) invites you to the following event:

'Yonder they do not love your flesh': Mourning, Anti-Blackness, and Claiming All of Us
Department: Humanities Center
Date and Time: June 3, 2020 | 12:00 PM-1:00 PM

Please join us to reflect on the persistence of anti-black violence and harm during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Moderated by Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Faculty Director of the Humanities Center

Speakers:

Jessica Millward, Associate Professor of History
Sabrina Strings, Associate Professor of Sociology
Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, Associate Professor of African American Studies

Register for Zoom Link: bit.ly/MourningAntiBlackness

"In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh." - Toni Morrison, Beloved

Racial Violence and Restorative Engagement in a Time of Pandemic

4/15/2020
3:30:00 PM

Racial inequality, and racial, gender and sexual violence–in forms both slow and spectacular–have not only persisted through the coronavirus pandemic, but also become even more apparent. This Webinar will discuss the need for universities and community partners to remain engaged in projects that map and respond to inequality and examine how to be responsive in ways that promote collaboration and understanding across axes of difference.

Introduction

Bill Maurer, Dean, UCI School of Social Sciences

Moderator

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Faculty Director, UCI Humanities Center

Concluding Comments

Doug Haynes, Vice Chancellor, UCI Office of Inclusive Excellence

Panelists

Kaaryn Gustafson, Professor, UCI School of Law

Sora Park Tanjasiri, Professor, UCI School of Medicine

Rodric Crooks, Assistant Professor, UCI Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences

Alison Edwards, CEO, OC Human Relations

Debbie Lacy, Founder/CEO of Eastside For All, East King County, WA

Co-sponsored by UCI Humanities Center, UCI Law Center on Law, Equality and Race (CLEAR), UCI School of Social Sciences, UCI Office of Inclusive Excellence, UCI School of Humanities, UCI Newkirk Center for Science & Society, UCI Claire Trevor School of the Arts, UCI Law, UCI Health, UCI Cross-Cultural Center, Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, UCI School of Education, Associated Graduate Students, and FRESH Basic Needs Hub

UCI Counts! The Importance of the 2020 Census

3/31/2020
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM

"What we do today, matters for the future." ~ Dr. Judy Tzu-Chun Wu

UCI Counts! The Importance of the 2020 Census
Hosted By: School of Social Sciences
Presented By: UCI School of Social Sciences and UCI Humanities Center
Co-Sponsors: Associated Students UCI, Associated Graduate Students, UCI School of Humanities, UCI Office of Inclusive Excellence, UCI School of Law’s Center on Law, Equality and Race (CLEAR), UCI Community & Government Relations, UCI Claire Trevor School of Arts, UCI School of Education, UCI School of Social Ecology, Social Sciences Academic Resource Center

Tuesday, March 31st | 12:00pm - 1:00pm | https://uci.zoom.us/j/600578735
Contact: Karissa Sorensen, karisscp@uci.edu
#UCIConversationsThatMatter

The US Census, what is it? And why should it matter? Every 10 years, the US Census provides a pathway for people to create a dialogue with the government. It allows them to have a voice, be properly represented, and fight for political recognition. Interested to see how this affects the lives of many? Join expert panelists as we explore how our contribution can create an impact on our nation.

Note: this event will be recorded via Zoom and is intended for public audiences.

Moderator:
Bill Maurer
Dean | School of Social Sciences and Professor
Anthropology, Law, and Criminology Law and Society

Featured Speakers:
Lynda Laughlin
Chief | Industry and Occupation Statistics Branch
Social, Economic, and Housing Statistics Division
U.S. Census Bureau

Mary Anne Foo
Executive Director | Orange County Asian Pacific Islander Community Alliance (OCAPICA)

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu
Director | Humanities Center and Professor
UCI School of Humanities | Asian American Studies

Kaaryn Gustafson
Director | Center on Law, Equality and Race and Professor
Associate Dean | Academic Community Engagement
UCI School of Law | Law

Matthew Freedman
Executive Director | California Census Research Data Center and Professor
UCI School of Social Sciences | Economics

Learn more about the Census:

Find out more about the census and respond online - https://2020census.gov/
For more about UCI’s effort to achieve a complete count, see: UCI Counts- https://www.facebook.com/UCICounts/
COVID-19 and the 2020 Census: Where Should College Students Be Counted? -
(https://www.prb.org/covid-19-and-the-2020- census-where-should-college-students-be-counted/)
The Census as Conversation with the State - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSDPP6LxR80&feature=youtu.b e
The Census as Conversation with the Past - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrq63BNNOXo&feature=youtu .be

American Monument Think Tank Marathon

3/7/2020
12:00:00 PM to 7:00:00 PM
Beall Center for Art and Technology
712 Arts Plaza, Irvine, CA 92697

Friday March 6 - Saturday March 7
12-7pm

Free and open to the public, reservations recommended
Beall Center for Art and Technology
Claire Trevor School of the Arts, UCI
RSVP Friday, March 6 and Saturday, March 7

In recent years, evidence of police violence has reached a new level of exposure, allowing increased public access to formal investigations of police brutality. In 2014, artist/cultural organizer lauren woods began to examine police records and court transcriptions in cases where a police officer killed an unarmed black civilian. She focused on officers’ claims citing “fear for their own lives,” ultimately used to justify the killings as lawful. This work grew into American Monument, an interactive sound sculpture, research project, and mode of public engagement and education.

American Monument’s first full iteration, 22/2019, launched at the Beall Center for Art and Technology at UCI on October 4, 2019 and is installed through April 4, 2020. The artist and her collaborator Kimberli Meyer are Black Box researchers in residence at the Beall, and have partnered with leading thinkers across disciplines at UCI, resulting in collaborations with the School of Law and the departments of African American Studies, Social Ecology, Art History, and Art. During the Fall 2019 quarter, collaborators led think tanks on topics such as sound and the law, the fourth amendment, linguistics in relation to racial bias in law enforcement, and community activist response strategies.

For Think Tank Marathon, American Monument is inviting scholars, lawyers, community activists, civil rights leaders, students, artists, and the public to process and discuss issues addressed by the monument. Working inside the installation at the Beall Center, a chain of sessions will take up multiple threads raised by the artwork. The program is co-sponsored by UCI Law’s Center on Law, Equality, And Race (CLEAR).

Participants include:

David Goldberg, Digital Media Theorist, Strategist and Developer
Kaaryn Gustafson, Professor and Associate Dean, UCI Law; Director, CLEAR
Sora Han, Professor of Criminology, Law and Society, UCI
Taylor Jones, PhD Candidate, University of Pennsylvania, Linguistics
Hamid Khan, Organizer, Stop LAPD Spying Coalition
James Lamb, JD Candidate 2020, UCI Law
Sara Mokuria, Co-founder of Mothers Against Police Brutality
Jasson Perez, Senior Research Analyst, Action Center on Race and the Economy
Jared Sexton, Professor of African American Studies, UCI
Aziz Sohail, MFA Candidate in Art (Critical and Curatorial Studies), UC

More to be announced.

American Monument is a participatory inter-media monument conceived as nomadic and continually expanding, moving across the country year-to-year, “unveiled” at universities, museums, storefronts, community centers, and churches. The artwork provides a vehicle for analyzing the complex relationship between the construction of race, material violence, structural power, and monumentality itself.

In 2018, American Monument initiated an extensive Freedom of Information Act request process. Close readings of use-of-force reports, prosecutor reports, witness testimonies, 911 calls, and body and dash cam videos revealed a consistent and disturbing problem: police use of white dominant cultural constructions and stereotypes of “Blackness,” mined from pop culture, to justify fatal violence.

The centerpiece of American Monument, Archive I, is an interactive sound sculpture. Encountering a grid of silently spinning black and white turntables on pedestals, visitors may choose to play an acetate record of audio materials gleaned from record requests, setting the apparatus and sound in motion. Each turntable represents one police murder. The sound is heard inside the interior space where the grid is located and simultaneously displaced outside the physical architecture of the monument, into locations unknown to the viewer. Supporting the main sculpture are reflection spaces to ponder law as a culture, including Archive II, which displays documents associated with each case represented in Archive I.

American Monument and its Think Tank Marathon is made possible by the generous support of the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, a founding and continuing grantor to the artwork; the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the University of California Humanities Research Institute; UCI Advance Program for Equity & Diversity; Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous; and the Beall Family Foundation. Additional backing comes from Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana.

Special thanks to collaborators Sara Daleiden, Sora Han, Simon Leung, John Spiak and Carol Zou

American Monument 22/2019
October 5, 2019 - April 4, 2020
Beall Center for Art and Technology, UCI
Claire Trevor School of the Arts, UCI

Hours: Monday - Saturday, 12:00 - 6:00 pm

American Monument Think Tank Marathon

3/6/2020
12:00:00 PM to 7:00:00 PM
Beall Center for Art and Technology
712 Arts Plaza, Irvine, CA 92697

Friday March 6 - Saturday March 7
12-7pm

Participants include:

David Goldberg, Digital Media Theorist, Strategist and Developer
Kaaryn Gustafson, Professor and Associate Dean, UCI Law; Director, CLEAR
Sora Han, Professor of Criminology, Law and Society, UCI
Taylor Jones, PhD Candidate, University of Pennsylvania, Linguistics
Hamid Khan, Organizer, Stop LAPD Spying Coalition
James Lamb, JD Candidate 2020, UCI Law
Sara Mokuria, Co-founder of Mothers Against Police Brutality
Jasson Perez, Senior Research Analyst, Action Center on Race and the Economy
Jared Sexton, Professor of African American Studies, UCI
Aziz Sohail, MFA Candidate in Art (Critical and Curatorial Studies), UC

More to be announced.

Special thanks to collaborators Sara Daleiden, Sora Han, Simon Leung, John Spiak and Carol Zou

American Monument 22/2019
October 5, 2019 - April 4, 2020
Beall Center for Art and Technology, UCI
Claire Trevor School of the Arts, UCI

Hours: Monday - Saturday, 12:00 - 6:00 pm

CLEAR Perspectives | The Second Founding

2/18/2020
5:45:00 PM to 7:15:00 PM
401 East Peltason Drive Irvine, CA 92697-8000

This session will discuss Eric Foner's book, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution (W.W. Norton, 2019).

Publisher's description:

A timely history of the constitutional changes that built equality into the nation’s foundation and how those guarantees have been shaken over time.

The Declaration of Independence announced equality as an American ideal, but it took the Civil War and the subsequent adoption of three constitutional amendments to establish that ideal as American law. The Reconstruction amendments abolished slavery, guaranteed all persons due process and equal protection of the law, and equipped black men with the right to vote. They established the principle of birthright citizenship and guaranteed the privileges and immunities of all citizens. The federal government, not the states, was charged with enforcement, reversing the priority of the original Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In grafting the principle of equality onto the Constitution, these revolutionary changes marked the second founding of the United States.

Eric Foner’s compact, insightful history traces the arc of these pivotal amendments from their dramatic origins in pre–Civil War mass meetings of African-American “colored citizens” and in Republican party politics to their virtual nullification in the late nineteenth century. A series of momentous decisions by the Supreme Court narrowed the rights guaranteed in the amendments, while the states actively undermined them. The Jim Crow system was the result. Again today there are serious political challenges to birthright citizenship, voting rights, due process, and equal protection of the law. Like all great works of history, this one informs our understanding of the present as well as the past: knowledge and vigilance are always necessary to secure our basic rights.

Eric Foner is the pre-eminent historian of the Civil War era. His teaching and scholarship have shaped our understanding of that pivotal period. His books have garnered every major award, including the Pulitzer Prize for The Fiery Trial, his study of Lincoln and American slavery. The DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, he also writes frequently for the Nation and other major periodicals. He lives in New York City.

The CLEAR Perspectives series serves as an informal setting where students and faculty can examine issues of concern to marginalized individuals and communities. At each meeting, discussion will be informed and guided by specific readings or films focusing on a particular issue or demographic. A limited number of copies of the books are available to law students free of charge. Details will be sent to those who RSVP. Copies of the books are also on reserve in the law library.

Borders & Belonging: Can a Woman be Elected President? A Conversation that Matters

2/18/2020
11:30:00 AM to 1:00:00 PM
HG 1010 and 1030

2020 is the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote in the United States. But, what is the difference between having the legal right to suffrage (for some women) and the actual practice of political power? Join us for the "Conversations that Matter: Borders & Belonging" Series, sponsored by the UCI Humanities Center.

11:30 Lunch in HG 1010 (Please rsvp by February 11: bit.ly/MsPresident)
Noon, HG 1030 Roundtable Conversation

Susan Masten, Current Vice- Chair and former Chair of the Yurok Tribe, past President of the National Congress of American Indians, Founder and Co-President of Women Empowering Women for Indigenous Nations

Melissa Ramoso, UCI Alumna, "proud Filipino American," only female council member of Artesia City, and State Chair of the Asian Pacific Islander Caucus of the California Democratic Party

Kaaryn Gustafson, UCI Professor of Law and Associate Dean of Academic Community Engagement

Co-sponsored by Womxn's Hub, Center on Law, Equality, and Race, Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy, Office of Inclusive Excellence, Asian American Pacific Islander Staff Association, AAPI Womxn in Leadership, Academic & Professional Women of UCI, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Illuminations

Film Screening | Necessity: Oil, Water, and Climate Resistance

2/4/2020
12:00:00 PM to 1:30:00 PM
401 East Peltason Drive Irvine, CA 92697-8000

NECESSITY
Oil, Water, and Climate Resistance
Directed by Jan Haaken & Samantha Praus

Grounded in people and places at the heart of the climate crisis, "Necessity" traces the fight in Minnesota against the expansion of pipelines carrying toxic tar sands oil through North America. The story unfolds in a setting where indigenous activists and non-indigenous allies make use of the necessity defense in making a moral case for acts of civil disobedience. Many of these activists were part of the Standing Rock resistance in North Dakota and carry into this site of struggle their knowledge of resistance strategies, as well as their experiences of loss and trauma. The film is structured around two stories of activists engaged in civil disobedience and using the necessity defense. One case centers on activists locking down a local Wells Fargo, a major investor in the pipelines. The other centers on climate activists as they prepare for a landmark jury trial after temporarily shutting down the flow of tar sands oil as part of a multi-state coordinated action. Movement lawyers defending activists in court must prove that the threat of the climate emergency justified acts of civil disobedience and that there were no legal alternatives. Water Protector Debra Topping guides us through areas where pipelines cross tribal lands and where native resistance is mounting. Tribal attorney Tara Houska shows how the destructive path of these pipelines endanger indigenous communities most directly. The film calls into question whether legal strategies are sufficient in responding to the scale of the global climate crisis.

Watch the trailer here.

Lunch will be provided.

Environmental Law Society at UCI

CLEAR Perspectives | The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race

1/28/2020
5:45:00 PM to 7:15:00 PM
401 East Peltason Drive Irvine, CA 92697-8000

This session will discuss Neda Maghbouleh's book, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race (Stanford University Press, 2017).

Publisher's introduction:
When Roya, an Iranian American high school student, is asked to identify her race, she feels anxiety and doubt. According to the federal government, she and others from the Middle East are white. Indeed, a historical myth circulates even in immigrant families like Roya's, proclaiming Iranians to be the "original" white race. But based on the treatment Roya and her family receive in American schools, airports, workplaces, and neighborhoods—interactions characterized by intolerance or hate—Roya is increasingly certain that she is not white. In The Limits of Whiteness, Neda Maghbouleh offers a groundbreaking, timely look at how Iranians and other Middle Eastern Americans move across the color line.

By shadowing Roya and more than 80 other young people, Maghbouleh documents Iranian Americans' shifting racial status. Drawing on never-before-analyzed historical and legal evidence, she captures the unique experience of an immigrant group trapped between legal racial invisibility and everyday racial hyper-visibility. Her findings are essential for understanding the unprecedented challenge Middle Easterners now face under "extreme vetting" and potential reclassification out of the "white" box. Maghbouleh tells for the first time the compelling, often heartbreaking story of how a white American immigrant group can become brown and what such a transformation says about race in America.

Discussion facilitated by Mehrsa Baradaran, Professor of Law, UCI School of Law

American Monument Think Tank | Hearing Sandra Bland Part 2: Black Speakers, White Listeners: An Interactive Linguistic Analysis

11/22/2019
4:00:00 PM to 5:30:00 PM
Beall Center for Art and Technology
University of California, Irvine, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, 712 Arts Plaza, Irvine, CA 92697

Hearing Sandra Bland Part 2: Black Speakers, White Listeners: An Interactive Linguistic Analysis
Nicole R. Holliday, Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, Pomona College

Led by a facilitator in the field, American Monument think tanks are spaces of inquiry where participants collectively explore policing and Blackness in the United States. The knowledge produced during think tanks will be added to American Monument as part of its unveiling in February 2020, reflecting the monument’s identity as a collectively-constructed work. All think tanks will take place in the Beall Center for Art and Technology unless otherwise noted.

--
American Monument is an artwork by lauren woods that prompts consideration of the cultural circumstances under which African-Americans lose their lives to police brutality. A participatory inter-media monument, it is conceived as nomadic and continually expanding, moving across the country year-to-year, “unveiled” at universities, museums, storefronts, community centers, and churches. The Beall Center installation will be the first full iteration of the project. The artwork provides a vehicle for analyzing the complex relationship between constructed race, material violence, structural power, and monumentality itself.

In 2018, American Monument initiated an extensive Freedom of Information Act request process. Close readings of use-of-force reports, prosecutor reports, witness testimonies, 911 calls, and body and dash cam videos revealed a consistent and disturbing problem: police use of white dominant cultural constructions and stereotypes of “Blackness,” mined from pop culture, to justify fatal violence.

The centerpiece of American Monument, Archive I, is an interactive sound sculpture. Encountering a grid of silently spinning black and white turntables on pedestals, visitors may choose to play an acetate record of audio materials gleaned from record requests, setting the apparatus and sound in motion. Each turntable represents one police murder. The sound is heard inside the interior space where the grid is located and simultaneously displaced outside the physical architecture of the monument, into locations unknown to the viewer.

Supporting the main sculpture are reflection spaces to ponder law as a culture. The main reflection space, Archive II, displays documents associated with each case represented in Archive I. The Beall launch invites scholars, lawyers, community activists, civil rights leaders, students, artists, and the general public to process and discuss issues addressed by American Monument through think-tanks and public forums. Thought production from these activities will generate expanded forms of critical engagement, which feed back into the monument. At the end of this collaborative production process in February 2020, the monument will be “unveiled” with a public symposium to signal the completion of this iteration.

The Beall Center has welcomed project co-leaders artist lauren woods and curator/cultural producer Kimberli Meyer as researchers in residence as part of its Black Box Project. The residency has connected them with leading thinkers across disciplines at UCI, including Law, African-American Studies, Social Ecology, Art, and Art History. Additional collaborators include Carol Zou and Sara Daleiden.

American Monument has been made possible by the generous support of the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, a founding and continuing grantor to the artwork; the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the University of California Humanities Research.

Special thanks to project partner Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana.

About the Artist:

lauren woods is a conceptual artist whose hybrid media projects—film, video and sound installations, public interventions and site-specific work—engage history as a lens by which to view the socio-politics of the present. She explores how traditional monument-making can be translated into new contemporary models of public memory, substituting the traditional marble and granite for new media. The first project in this line of exploration, Drinking Fountain #1, unveiled in 2013. Part of the larger public artwork, A Dallas Drinking Fountain Project, the new media monument to the American civil rights movement, past and present activists/organizers, and the spirit of resistance, is located underneath the remnants of a recently rediscovered Jim Crow “White Only” sign. Part sculpture, part intervention, it is located in the Dallas County Records Building in Dallas, Texas.

Born in Kansas City, Mo. and raised in Texas, woods holds a B.A. in radio, television and film and a B.A. in Spanish with a sociology minor from the University of North Texas. In 2006, she received her Master of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally, including Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Dallas and Miami, as well as Puerto Rico, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Mali and France. She has been the recipient of grants and awards from numerous institutions including the Creative Capital Foundation, The Tribeca Film Institute, College Art Association, Alliance of Artists Communities and The San Francisco Foundation.

To sign up for the American Monument Mailing List, please click this link.

Iteration Dates:
October 5, 2019 – February 9, 2020

Gallery Hours:
Monday - Saturday: 12pm – 6pm
Closed: Sundays
Free admission and docent tours

Location:
712 Arts Plaza, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, UC Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697

Parking:
Student Center Parking Structure: 311 W. Peltason Drive, Irvine, CA 92697
Mesa Parking Structure: 4000 Mesa Road, Irvine, CA 92697
*all campus parking requires payment; $2 per hour, $7 half day, $10 full day, credit and debit cards accepted For maps, driving directions and parking information go to: http://www.parking.uci.edu/maps/imap.cfm< /p>

American Monument Think Tank | Hearing Sandra Bland Part 1: What Sound Tells Us About How to Get Away with Murder

11/19/2019
4:00:00 PM to 5:30:00 PM
Beall Center for Art and Technology
University of California, Irvine, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, 712 Arts Plaza, Irvine, CA 92697

Hearing Sandra Bland Part 1: What Sound Tells Us About How to Get Away with Murder
Sora Han, Associate Professor, Criminology, Law & Society, School of Law, African American Studies, UCI

Led by a facilitator in the field, American Monument think tanks are spaces of inquiry where participants collectively explore policing and Blackness in the United States. The knowledge produced during think tanks will be added to American Monument as part of its unveiling in February 2020, reflecting the monument’s identity as a collectively-constructed work. All think tanks will take place in the Beall Center for Art and Technology unless otherwise noted.

--
American Monument is an artwork by lauren woods that prompts consideration of the cultural circumstances under which African-Americans lose their lives to police brutality. A participatory inter-media monument, it is conceived as nomadic and continually expanding, moving across the country year-to-year, “unveiled” at universities, museums, storefronts, community centers, and churches. The Beall Center installation will be the first full iteration of the project. The artwork provides a vehicle for analyzing the complex relationship between constructed race, material violence, structural power, and monumentality itself.

Special thanks to project partner Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana.

About the Artist:

CLEAR Perspectives | How to Be an Antiracist

11/19/2019
5:45:00 PM to 7:45:00 PM
401 East Peltason Drive Irvine, CA 92697-8000

This session will discuss Ibram X. Kendi's book, How to Be an Antiracist (One World, 2019).

Publisher's introduction:
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning comes a refreshing approach that will radically reorient America on the urgent issues of race, justice, and equality.

Ibram X. Kendi's concept of antiracism reenergizes and reshapes the conversation about racial justice in America--but even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. Instead of working with the policies and system we have in place, Kendi asks us to think about what an antiracist society might look like, and how we can play an active role in building it.

In his memoir, Kendi weaves together an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science-- including the story of his own awakening to antiracism--bringing it all together in a cogent, accessible form. He begins by helping us rethink our most deeply held, if implicit, beliefs and our most intimate personal relationships (including beliefs about race and IQ and interracial social relations) and reexamines the policies and larger social arrangements we support. How to Be an Antiracist promises to become an essential book for anyone who wants to go beyond an awareness of racism to the next step of contributing to the formation of a truly just and equitable society.

Film Screening and Q&A: Los Infiltrados/The Infiltrators (2019)

11/15/2019
4:00:00 PM to 7:00:00 PM
Humanities Gateway
4100 Humanities Gateway, Irvine, CA

THE INFILTRATORS is a docu-thriller that tells the true story of young immigrants who get arrested by Border Patrol, and put in a shadowy for-profit detention center – on purpose. Marco and Viri are members of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, a group of radical Dreamers who are on a mission to stop deportations. And the best place to stop deportations, they believe, is in detention. However, when Marco and Viri try to pull off their heist – a kind of ‘prison break’ in reverse – things don’t go according to plan.

By weaving together documentary footage of the real infiltrators with scripted re-enactments of the events inside the detention center, THE INFILTRATORS tells this incredible true story in a boundary- crossing new cinematic language. The Hollywood Reporter said of the multiple award-winning film “rather than feeling like homework, watching it is a thrill.”

Co-Directors Alex Rivera and Christina Ibarra will join us for a reception in the Humanities Gateway patio at 4:00 pm, which will be followed by the screening in the McCormick Screening Room at 4:30 p.m. We will have the opportunity to have a Q&A with them after the screening.

Please watch the Democracy Now report on the movie here.

Press reviews:

REMEZCLA - January 17, 2019
"Here’s Your Guide to Latino Movies, Series, and Shorts at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival" by Manuel Betancourt.

THE AUSTIN CHRONICLE - January 17, 2019
"Sundance, Slamdance, SXSW, and More Austin Film News" by Richard Whittaker.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER - January 23, 2019
"Sundance Poised for Dreamers-ICE Showdown at Doc Premiere" by Tatiana Siegel.
ROLLING STONE - January 21, 2019
25 Movies We Can’t Wait to See at Sundance 2019 by David Fear.

INDIEWIRE - January 23, 2019
"Sundance 2019: The Most Anticipated LGBTQ Films and Projects Heading to Park City" by Jude Dry.

This is part of the Humanities Center’s Borders and Belonging Initiative. This event is generously supported by the Humanities Center’s Borders and Belonging Initiative, the Department of Film and Media, the Center on Law, Equality and Race at UCI Law, the Office of Inclusive Excellence, the School of Humanities, and the School of Social Sciences.

American Monument Launch Reception

10/5/2019
2:00:00 PM to 5:00:00 PM
712 Arts Plaza, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, UC Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697

American Monument is an artwork by lauren woods that prompts consideration of the cultural circumstances under which African-Americans lose their lives to police brutality. A participatory inter-media monument, it is conceived as nomadic and continually expanding, moving across the country year-to-year, “unveiled” at universities, museums, storefronts, community centers, and churches. The Beall Center installation will be the first full iteration of the project. The artwork provides a vehicle for analyzing the complex relationship between constructed race, material violence, structural power, and monumentality itself.

Special thanks to project partner Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana.

About the Artist:

To sign up for the American Monument Mailing List, please click this link.

Launch Reception:
Saturday, October 5, 2019, 2-5pm
FREE admission

Additional events to be announced online. Join our mailing list at www.beallcenter.uci.edu

Iteration Dates:
October 5, 2019 – February 9, 2020

Gallery Hours:
Monday - Saturday: 12pm – 6pm
Closed: Sundays
Free admission and docent tours

Location:
712 Arts Plaza, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, UC Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697

Parking:
Student Center Parking Structure: 311 W. Peltason Drive, Irvine, CA 92697
Mesa Parking Structure: 4000 Mesa Road, Irvine, CA 92697
*all campus parking requires payment; $2 per hour, $7 half day, $10 full day, credit and debit cards accepted For maps, driving directions and parking information go to: http://www.parking.uci.edu/maps/imap.cfm< /p>

Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do

10/4/2019
3:00:00 PM to 4:30:00 PM
SBSG
234 Pereira Dr, Irvine, CA 92697

Join us for a discussion with Stanford Professor Jennifer Eberhardt about her book, Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do.

Dr. Eberhardt is a professor of psychology at Stanford and a recipient of a 2014 MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grant. She has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was named one of Foreign Policy‘s 100 Leading Global Thinkers. She also is co-founder and co-director of SPARQ (Social Psychological Answers to Real-World Questions), a Stanford Center that brings together researchers and practitioners to address significant social problems.

When: Friday, October 4, 2019
Where: SBSG 1517

12:00 - 1:30 p.m. Lunch Workshop (for Faculty Search and Graduate Admissions Committees Only)
3:00 - 4:30 p.m. Talk followed by book signing (everyone welcome!)

For more information on this speaker, please visit www.prhspeakers.com.

Sponsored by:
UCI School of Social Sciences

Co-sponsors:
Office of Inclusive Excellence
UCI School of Law
UCI School of Social Ecology
UCI Donald Bren School of Information & Computer Sciences
UCI Samueli School of Engineering

CLEAR Perspectives | Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do

9/24/2019
5:30:00 PM to 7:00:00 PM
401 East Peltason Drive Irvine, CA 92697-8000

This session will discuss Jennifer L. Eberhardt's book, Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do (Penguin Random House, 2019).

Publisher's introduction:
You don’t have to be racist to be biased. Unconscious bias can be at work without our realizing it, and even when we genuinely wish to treat all people equally, ingrained stereotypes can infect our visual perception, attention, memory, and behavior. This has an impact on education, employment, housing, and criminal justice. In Biased, with a perspective that is at once scientific, investigative, and informed by personal experience, Jennifer Eberhardt offers us insights into the dilemma and a path forward.

Eberhardt works extensively as a consultant to law enforcement and as a psychologist at the forefront of this new field. Her research takes place in courtrooms and boardrooms, in prisons, on the street, and in classrooms and coffee shops. She shows us the subtle–and sometimes dramatic–daily repercussions of implicit bias in how teachers grade students, or managers deal with customers. It has an enormous impact on the conduct of criminal justice, from the rapid decisions police officers have to make to sentencing practices in court. Eberhardt’s work and her book are both influenced by her own life, and the personal stories she shares emphasize the need for change. She has helped companies that include Airbnb and Nextdoor address bias in their business practices and has led anti-bias initiatives for police departments across the country. Here, she offers practical suggestions for reform and new practices that are useful for organizations as well as individuals.

Unblinking about the tragic consequences of prejudice, Eberhardt addresses how racial bias is not the fault of nor restricted to a few “bad apples” but is present at all levels of society in media, education, and business. The good news is that we are not hopelessly doomed by our innate prejudices. In Biased, Eberhardt reminds us that racial bias is a human problem–one all people can play a role in solving.

CLEAR Perspectives | American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear

3/18/2019
5:30:00 PM to 7:00:00 PM
UCI School of Law

This session will discuss Khaled A. Beydoun's book, American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear (UC Press, 2019).

Publisher's introduction:
The term “Islamophobia” may be fairly new, but irrational fear and hatred of Islam and Muslims is anything but. Though many speak of Islamophobia’s roots in racism, have we considered how anti-Muslim rhetoric is rooted in our legal system?

Using his unique lens as a critical race theorist and law professor, Khaled A. Beydoun captures the many ways in which law, policy, and official state rhetoric have fueled the frightening resurgence of Islamophobia in the United States. Beydoun charts its long and terrible history, from the plight of enslaved African Muslims in the antebellum South and the laws prohibiting Muslim immigrants from becoming citizens to the ways the war on terror assigns blame for any terrorist act to Islam and the myriad trials Muslim Americans face in the Trump era. He passionately argues that by failing to frame Islamophobia as a system of bigotry endorsed and emboldened by law and carried out by government actors, U.S. society ignores the injury it inflicts on both Muslims and non-Muslims. Through the stories of Muslim Americans who have experienced Islamophobia across various racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines, Beydoun shares how U.S. laws shatter lives, whether directly or inadvertently. And with an eye toward benefiting society as a whole, he recommends ways for Muslim Americans and their allies to build coalitions with other groups. Like no book before it, American Islamophobia offers a robust and genuine portrait of Muslim America then and now.

CLEAR Distinguished Critical Race Theory Lecture: Meera E. Deo

2/26/2019
5:30:00 PM to 7:00:00 PM
401 East Peltason Drive Irvine, CA 92697-8000

Meera E. Deo, Professor of Law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and the Director of the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE), will discuss her book, Unequal Profession: Race and Gender in Legal Academia (Stanford University Press, 2019). The book draws from Professor Deo’s landmark Diversity in Legal Academia (DLA) project, the first formal empirical study to investigate raceXgender challenges and opportunities facing law professors from diverse backgrounds around the US. Professor Deo’s data expose ongoing biases—but also individual strategies and structural solutions to maximize success.

Book signing and reception to follow. Refreshments will be provided.

1.0 hours of MCLE credit for Recognition and Elimination of Bias in the Legal Profession approved by the State Bar of California. UCI School of Law is a State Bar-approved MCLE provider.

About the Book
In Unequal Profession: Race and Gender in Legal Academia, Professor Meera E. Deo reveals troubling findings of ongoing raceXgender bias in the law school faculty ranks. The book draws from her Diversity in Legal Academia (DLA) project, which is the first formal mixed-method study of the law faculty experience. Her study utilizes a framework of intersectionality from Critical Race Theory to survey and interview women and men from various racial and ethnic backgrounds and amplify the voices of those who are traditionally underrepresented and marginalized.

Professor Deo’s findings of intersectional bias are grim. Classroom confrontations and biases in course evaluations have devastating effects on tenure and promotion. Colleagues who mansplain, hepeat, and silence marginalized faculty contribute to the higher rate of attrition for female professors of color. The data reveal interesting parallels between hiring and leadership for women of color faculty, as many do not pursue faculty or administrative positions primarily because they are told (directly or indirectly) that they do not belong. These experiences of exclusion and marginalization also parallel those of traditionally underrepresented students. Unequal Profession outlines individual strategies for success that worked for many study participants and can be adapted for others. Necessary structural solutions—from thinking “outside the box” to purposefully working against implicit bias—are also emphasized in the book.

Unequal Profession is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple iBooks. Readers can find more information and also purchase the book from the Stanford University Press website.

About the Author
Meera E. Deo, JD, PhD, is Director of the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE), Professor of Law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, and Visiting Professor at UC Davis School of Law. She was a Visiting Scholar at UC Irvine School of Law from 2016-2017 and has held visiting positions at UCLA School of Law and Berkeley Law. Her research utilizes empirical methods to interrogate institutional diversity, affirmative action, and racial representation. Professor Deo's scholarship has been published in leading law journals and cited in numerous amicus briefs filed in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Professor Deo’s book, Unequal Profession: Race and Gender in Legal Academia (Stanford University Press, 2019), draws from her landmark Diversity in Legal Academia project, the first national empirical study of law faculty utilizing an intersectional framework. The book examines how race and gender affect interactions with faculty and students, tenure and promotion, work/life balance, institutional support, and other aspects of the personal and professional lives of law faculty. Professor Deo’s sobering findings expose ongoing raceXgender inequities in legal academia. She also proposes structural solutions to improve legal education overall.

A proud gradute of Long Beach Polytechnic High School, Professor Deo earned a B.A. with High Honors from UC Berkeley. While a law student at the University of Michigan, she was an Intervening-Defendant and member of the legal team supporting integration and affirmative action in Grutter v. Bollinger. After graduating, she practiced civil rights law with the ACLU National Legal Department in New York City and the California Women's Law Center in Los Angeles. She later pursued a PhD in Sociology from UCLA. The National Science Foundation (NSF), the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship, and numerous grants and awards have supported her research. The Coalition for Asian Pacific American Law Faculty (CAPALF) awarded her their 2018 Eric K Yamamoto Award for demonstrating “outstanding promise.” She is also a 2019 Scholar-in-Residence at Berkeley Law’s Thelton E Henderson Center for Social Justice. Professor Deo was a Senate-appointed Member of the California Commission on Access to Justice and is the current Chair of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Law and the Social Sciences.

CLEAR: The Significance of Mendez v. Westminster for the Asian-American Community

2/21/2019
5:30:00 PM to 8:00:00 PM
401 East Peltason Drive Irvine, CA 92697-8000

A conversation with Janice Munemitsu and Judge Joanne Motoike

Orange County United Way is proud to partner with UCI School of Law to host an informative session highlighting the landmark case Mendez v. Westminster and how the ruling ended segregation in California in 1947. It also laid the groundwork for Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

In partnership with the Orange County Asian American Bar Association, Orange County Department of Education, and Veterans Legal Institute.

"Dealing with Racist Patients" Keynote with Kimani Paul-Emile and Alicia Fernandez

2/13/2019
4:00:00 PM to 5:00:00 PM
Tamkin Student Lecture Building
Health Sciences Road, Irvine, CA 92697

Please join us for a discussion with 2 co-authors of "Dealing with Racist Patients" (New England Journal of Medicine, 2016) as Drs. Kimani Paul-Emile (Fordham) and Alicia Fernandez (UCSF) elaborate on the complex challenges facing the healthcare system and its providers in our increasingly diverse society.

Co-sponsored by the Center on Law, Equality and Race (CLEAR).

CLEAR Perspectives | A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

2/11/2019
5:30:00 PM to 7:00:00 PM
UCI School of Law

This session will discuss Jeanne Theoharis's book, A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History (Beacon Press, 2018).

Publisher's introduction:
The civil rights movement has become national legend, lauded by presidents from Reagan to Obama to Trump, as proof of the power of American democracy. This fable, featuring dreamy heroes and accidental heroines, has shuttered the movement firmly in the past, whitewashed the forces that stood in its way, and diminished its scope. And it is used perniciously in our own times to chastise present-day movements and obscure contemporary injustice.

In A More Beautiful and Terrible History award-winning historian Jeanne Theoharis dissects this national myth-making, teasing apart the accepted stories to show them in a strikingly different light. We see Rosa Parks not simply as a bus lady but a lifelong criminal justice activist and radical; Martin Luther King, Jr. as not only challenging Southern sheriffs but Northern liberals, too; and Coretta Scott King not only as a “helpmate” but a lifelong economic justice and peace activist who pushed her husband’s activism in these directions.

Moving from “the histories we get” to “the histories we need,” Theoharis challenges nine key aspects of the fable to reveal the diversity of people, especially women and young people, who led the movement; the work and disruption it took; the role of the media and “polite racism” in maintaining injustice; and the immense barriers and repression activists faced. Theoharis makes us reckon with the fact that far from being acceptable, passive or unified, the civil rights movement was unpopular, disruptive, and courageously persevering. Activists embraced an expansive vision of justice—which a majority of Americans opposed and which the federal government feared.

By showing us the complex reality of the movement, the power of its organizing, and the beauty and scope of the vision, Theoharis proves that there was nothing natural or inevitable about the progress that occurred. A More Beautiful and Terrible History will change our historical frame, revealing the richness of our civil rights legacy, the uncomfortable mirror it holds to the nation, and the crucial work that remains to be done.

CLEAR Japanese Internment and America’s History of Family Detention: Screening and Discussion of the Film, "And Then They Came for Us"

1/30/2019
6:00:00 PM to 8:00:00 PM
A311 Student Center, Irvine, CA 92697-2050

A panel discussion examining past and present policies denying rights to targeted communities in the service of "national security" will follow the screening of Abby Ginzberg and Ken Schneider's film, And Then They Came for US, on the forced incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII.

Panelists Include:
Sam Mihara, Author, educator, photographer, and internee
Thomas Fujita Rony, Associate Professor, Asian American Studies, California State University, Fullerton
Neil Gotanda, Professor of Law, Emeritus, Western State College of Law and Faculty Advisory Board Member, CLEAR

Moderated by Annie Lai, Clinical Professor of Law, UCI School of Law

Supported by the UCI Office of Inclusive Excellence, Department of Asian American Studies, and Asian Pacific American Law Student Association (APALSA).

CLEANR/CLEAR Book Talk: What the Eyes Don't See

1/23/2019
5:00:00 PM to 6:00:00 PM
A311 Student Center, Irvine, CA 92697-2050

Pediatrician, professor, and public health advocate Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha will sit down with UCI Assistant Professor Alana LeBron to discuss her new book, "What the Eyes Don't See," detailing her research and advocacy to expose the Flint, MI water crisis.

Book signing will follow. First 350 RSVPs will receive a free book.

Hosted by UCI Wellness, Health & Counseling Services, with support from UCI Population Health and Disease Prevention; UCI Community Resilience; UCI School of Humanities; UCI Law Center for Land, Environment, and Natural Resources; UCI Law Center on Law, Equality and Race, and the UCI Departments of History, Athropology, and Chicano/Latino Studies.

CLEAR Author Meets Readers: Sherally Munshi

1/9/2019
6:30:00 PM to 8:00:00 PM
UCI School of Law
401 E. Peltason Dr., Irvine, CA 92697

Sherally Munshi, Associate Professor of Law at Georgetown Law, will discuss her forthcoming chapter, “Immigration,” in The Oxford Handbook of Law and Humanities.

Abstract: In legal scholarship on immigration, as in public discourse, we often take for granted the normative and conceptual priority of nation-state borders—as though borders were here first, migrants came second. But, of course, people have been migrating since long before the establishment of nation-state borders. European imperialism was sustained by mass migration. The British imperial system consisted of both the voluntary migration of colonial settlers and administrators and the involuntary or forced migration of enslaved Africans, Asian “coolies,” criminal convicts. This essay seeks to reframe the study of immigration law in the United States by displacing the contentional framework of the nationstate, through which questions about immigration law and policy are raised, and replacing it with an expanded framework of “the imperial.”

Film Screening: This Changes Everything

1/7/2019
1:00:00 PM to 4:15:00 PM
401 East Peltason Drive Irvine, CA 92697-8000

Join us for a screening of This Changes Everything, which premiered in September at the Toronto Film Festival. This Changes Everything is a feature documentary that examines the under-representation and misrepresentation of women in Hollywood, looking on-screen and behind the camera. It features interviews with women leaders in the industry, including Geena Davis, Meryl Streep, Chloe Moretz, and Yara Shahidi, as well as advocates and experts like Anita Hill, Melissa Goodman, and UCI Law School Instructor Kalpana Kotagal. Producer Ilan Arboleda and Melissa Goodman, Director of Advocacy of the ACLU of Southern California, will join Kalpana and her class for a discussion of the film and issues of advocacy, litigation, and organizing to advance greater workplace equality after the screening.

CLEAR Perspectives Book Discussion: Alien Capital; The War Against Chinese Restaurants

11/16/2018
3:30:00 PM to 5:00:00 PM
401 East Peltason Drive Irvine, CA 92697-8000

This Perspectives meeting will discuss Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism by Iyko Day
& The War Against Chinese Restaurants by Gabriel J. Chin & John Ormonde.

Alien Capital publisher's description: In Alien Capital Iyko Day retheorizes the history and logic of settler colonialism by examining its intersection with capitalism and the racialization of Asian immigrants to Canada and the United States. Day explores how the historical alignment of Asian bodies and labor with capital's abstract and negative dimensions became one of settler colonialism's foundational and defining features. This alignment allowed white settlers to gloss over and expunge their complicity with capitalist exploitation from their collective memory. Day reveals this process through an analysis of a diverse body of Asian North American literature and visual culture, including depictions of Chinese railroad labor in the 1880s, filmic and literary responses to Japanese internment in the 1940s, and more recent examinations of the relations between free trade, national borders, and migrant labor. In highlighting these artists' reworking and exposing of the economic modalities of Asian racialized labor, Day pushes beyond existing approaches to settler colonialism as a Native/settler binary to formulate it as a dynamic triangulation of Native, settler, and alien populations and positionalities.

The War Against Chinese Restaurants abstract: Chinese restaurants are a cultural fixture—as American as cherry pie. Startlingly, however, there was once a national movement to eliminate Chinese restaurants, using innovative legal methods to drive them out. Chinese restaurants were objectionable for two reasons. First, Chinese restaurants competed with “American” restaurants, thus threatening the livelihoods of white owners, cooks, and servers and motivating unions to fight them. Second, Chinese restaurants threatened white women, who were subject to seduction by Chinese men taking advantage of intrinsic female weakness and nefarious techniques such as opium addiction.

A limited number of copies of the books are available to law students free of charge. Details will be sent to those who RSVP. Copies of the books are also on reserve in the law library.

The War Against Chinese Restaurants can be accessed here.

The CLEAR Perspectives series serves as an informal setting where students and faculty can examine issues of concern to marginalized individuals and communities. At each meeting, discussion will be informed and guided by specific readings or films focusing on a particular issue or demographic.

Refreshments will be provided.

CLEAR Perspectives Book Discussion: Algorithms of Oppression

10/26/2018
3:30:00 PM to 5:00:00 PM
401 East Peltason Drive Irvine, CA 92697-8000

This Perspectives meeting will discuss Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble.

Publisher's description:
A revealing look at how negative biases against women of color are embedded in search engine results and algorithms

Run a Google search for “black girls”—what will you find? “Big Booty” and other sexually explicit terms are likely to come up as top search terms. But, if you type in “white girls,” the results are radically different. The suggested porn sites and un- moderated discussions about “why black women are so sassy” or “why black women are so angry” presents a disturbing portrait of black womanhood in modern society.

In Algorithms of Oppression, Safiya Umoja Noble challenges the idea that search engines like Google offer an equal playing field for all forms of ideas, identities, and activities. Data discrimination is a real social problem; Noble argues that the combination of private interests in promoting certain sites, along with the monopoly status of a relatively small number of Internet search engines, leads to a biased set of search algorithms that privilege whiteness and discriminate against people of color, specifically women of color.

Through an analysis of textual and media searches as well as extensive research on paid online advertising, Noble exposes a culture of racism and sexism in the way discoverability is created online. As search engines and their related companies grow in importance—operating as a source for email, a major vehicle for primary and secondary school learning, and beyond—understanding and reversing these disquieting trends and discriminatory practices is of utmost importance.

An original, surprising and, at times, disturbing account of bias on the internet, Algorithms of Oppression contributes to our understanding of how racism is created, maintained, and disseminated in the 21st century.

A limited number of copies of the books are available to law students free of charge. Details will be sent to those who RSVP. Copies of the books are also on reserve in the law library.

The CLEAR Perspectives series serves as an informal setting where students and faculty can examine issues of concern to marginalized individuals and communities. At each meeting, discussion will be informed and guided by specific readings or films focusing on a particular issue or demographic.

Refreshments will be provided.

CLEAR Perspectives Book Discussion: City of Inmates

10/16/2018
5:30:00 PM to 7:00:00 PM
401 East Peltason Drive Irvine, CA 92697-8000

This Perspectives meeting will discuss City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965 by Kelly Lytle Hernández.

Publisher's description: Los Angeles incarcerates more people than any other city in the United States, which imprisons more people than any other nation on Earth. This book explains how the City of Angels became the capital city of the world’s leading incarcerator. Marshaling more than two centuries of evidence, historian Kelly Lytle Hernández unmasks how histories of native elimination, immigrant exclusion, and black disappearance drove the rise of incarceration in Los Angeles. In this telling, which spans from the Spanish colonial era to the outbreak of the 1965 Watts Rebellion, Hernández documents the persistent historical bond between the racial fantasies of conquest, namely its settler colonial form, and the eliminatory capacities of incarceration.

But City of Inmates is also a chronicle of resilience and rebellion, documenting how targeted peoples and communities have always fought back. They busted out of jail, forced Supreme Court rulings, advanced revolution across bars and borders, and, as in the summer of 1965, set fire to the belly of the city. With these acts those who fought the rise of incarceration in Los Angeles altered the course of history in the city, the borderlands, and beyond. This book recounts how the dynamics of conquest met deep reservoirs of rebellion as Los Angeles became the City of Inmates, the nation’s carceral core. It is a story that is far from over.

A limited number of copies of the books are available to law students free of charge. Details will be sent to those who RSVP. Copies of the books are also on reserve in the law library.

The CLEAR Perspectives series serves as an informal setting where students and faculty can examine issues of concern to marginalized individuals and communities. At each meeting, discussion will be informed and guided by specific readings or films focusing on a particular issue or demographic.

Refreshments will be provided.

CLEAR Perspectives Film Screening: The Chinese Exclusion Act

9/7/2018
3:30:00 PM to 5:30:00 PM
401 East Peltason Drive Irvine, CA 92697-8000

This first meeting of the Fall 2018 Perspectives Series will present Ric Burns and Li-Shin Yu's film, The Chinese Exclusion Act . This film examines the origin, history and impact of the 1882 law that made it illegal for Chinese workers to come to America and for Chinese nationals already here ever to become U.S. citizens. The first in a long line of laws targeting the Chinese for exclusion, it remained in force for more than 60 years.

Discussion will be facilitated by CLEAR Director Professor Kaaryn Gustafson and Asian American Studies Chair Professor Judy Wu.

Refreshments will be provided.

The CLEAR Perspectives series serves as an informal setting where students and faculty can examine issues of concern to marginalized individuals and communities. At each meeting, discussion will be informed and guided by specific readings or films focusing on a particular issue or demographic.

Contact

Rabie Kadri
Law Centers Manager
centers@law.uci.edu
(949) 824-2370